Google Brings Differential File Sync to Drive for Desktop

Google Drive for Windows and Mac now supports differential file uploads, dramatically improving sync speed when editing large files.

“We’ve added support for differential uploads to Google Drive, which means when large files are edited, Drive for desktop will now upload only the parts of the file that changed,” a new Google Workspaces Updates blog post explains. “This highly requested feature results in much faster Drive syncs.”

In my experience, Google Drive was already faster and more reliable than OneDrive, at least in Windows. And with the addition of native support for Windows 11 on Arm, Google Drive is even better. Apparently, differential sync is a hard computer science problem: Microsoft did implement this feature back in 2020, but it took several years to do so and had promised it would arrive “in the coming months” as far back as 2018.

This update is available immediately to all Google Drive users, including those with free Gmail accounts.