Google Drive update makes videos load faster and refreshes the search experience

What you need to know

• Google is introducing a new update for videos uploaded to Drive, allowing them to adapt playback quality based on network speed.
• All new videos uploaded to Drive will utilize the new feature, and existing videos are slated for an update by the end of the year.
• Google is also elevating Drive's search experience on iOS with new filters, with plans for an Android rollout later.

Google is dropping a fresh update for Drive on mobile that will automatically adjust video quality to make load times way snappier.

Although Google Drive's video player seems like a distant cousin of YouTube's, you've probably felt the struggle when trying to stream videos on the platform. It's not exactly a smooth ride—videos take ages to kick off, and buffering feels like a snail's pace.

To fix this agony, Google is introducing Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) for all fresh videos uploaded to Drive. This means your videos will adjust their playback quality based on your network speed.

With the DASH upgrade on Google Drive, we're talking way faster "join times"—that's's the time it takes from clicking the video to it actually playing. Plus, re-buffering will be minimized, whether you're on fast or regular playback.

All the new videos you toss into the cloud storage service will get the DASH treatment. And Google is planning to update all your existing videos on Drive by the end of the year.

Google is also amping up Drive's search experience on iOS, with plans to roll out the same upgrade to Android. Now, Drive has added handy filters like File Type, Owner, and Last Modified right below the search bar.

The People tab in Drive gives you access to files from your recent contacts. Meanwhile, Type and Modified make it a lot easier to sort files by type and how fresh they are.

Google says everyone with a Workspace account or a personal Google account gets to experience these new search filters. It's clear that Google is giving some love to the user experience on Google Drive with these updates.