Google Drive is rolling out a new homepage that will make it easier and faster for you to find files, even as the company confronts an issue that saw files go missing from users' drives. Google acknowledged the issue and expects to have a solution in the next few days. Cloud storage service expands document scanning to iOS devices a decade after introducing it on Android, the company said today.

Google Drive is gaining a new "Home" view that uses machine learning algorithms to automatically suggest files and folders-opened recently, shared or edited as well as documents sent as attachments to future Google Calendar events.

Also, the top page now features new filters or "search chips" - to search for documents by type, people, the date modified or location. There are still tabs to drill down into files or folders.

Google said in a blog post it is leveraging Google's Material Design 3 guidelines for a more "modern design." Material 3 is the company's latest release of an open source design system designed to be cohesive with Android 12, 13, and 14.

Google Drive now makes Home view the default homepage. Of course, you can revert back to the old landing page if you so prefer by clicking on the "Change to My Drive" in the banner.

This is available to all users of Google Workspace, as well as individuals with their own personal Google Accounts. It will fully roll out in January. Google began its beta testing of the new homepage in May.

Google is also finally expanding its document scanning feature to iOS devices, which debuted on Android in 2013. Apple introduced its scanner feature in the Notes app in 2017.
Google's scanner comes embedded in the Drive app, allowing you to scan physical documents and apply filters, crop them as needed, and save them to Drive.

Google also announced that the Drive scanner on Android now includes an automatic capture feature, an option to import documents from your camera roll, a new scanner button to quickly initialize a scan and a camera viewfinder to help position the document. The company added title suggestions for scanned documents in the beginning of the year.

Reports emerged earlier this week that Google Drive was having issues with missing files. According to multiple posts on the Google Support forum, some users lost access to files, making them appear to be completely gone from the cloud service. The company said it was investigating the reports and warned users not to disconnect their account or delete/move the app data folder.

"We have identified the issue impacting a small subset of Drive for desktop users on version 84, which only affected local file changes that had yet to be synced to Drive," said a company representative. "We are working on a solution to make files available to users and expect the solution to be available in the next few days."