Google Drive users be advised: Trash items will soon auto-delete

In a recent blog post, Google announced that starting October 13, 2020, Google Drive will no longer indefinitely retain items that users store in the Trash section. Any items in the Google Drive Trash will start getting automatically deleted after a period of 30 days.

The tech giant claims that the change is being implemented to match the policies of Gmail and other G Suite products, ensuring a consistent and predictable (for users) behavior across them all.

Users will be shown a banner informing them of the change, although said change will take effect regardless of whether the user acknowledges the banner or not. In-app notifications informing of the new Trash storage behavior are also going to be shown to users.

Again, this new time limit for Trash items will be in effect starting October 13. Until then, Trash items will remain undisturbed, as was the case prior. If you're a Google Drive user, you may want to check the items in your Google Drive's Trash section, so you can restore any photos or items that you may have second thoughts about, before they're deleted indefinitely.

Google Drive is among the top file storage services in the world, with one of its few notable competitors being Apple's iCloud. On Apple devices, namely iPhone and iPad, Drive was recently also updated to add an extra layer of protection via a new feature called Privacy Screen, which takes advantage of the devices' biometrics.

To get the Google Drive app on your iPhone or iPad, you can download it from the Apple App Store here. Android users normally have the app pre-installed on their phones, but you can update it from its Google Play page here. Note that postponing updates will not prevent the Google Drive change in question from coming in effect.