How to Easily Find the Biggest Files in your Google Drive

What do you do when your Google Drive is running out of storage space? You either add more storage or the inexpensive option is that you clean up your Drive and delete the large files that are hogging up the bulk of space. But how do know where these big files are hiding in your Drive?

Google Drives lists the file size but without the sort option.

If you switch to the List View in Google Drive (the list icon is near the Settings gear), it will show the sizes of all your files but unfortunately there’s no option to sort that list by their sizes. Also, Google Drive doesn’t support a Gmail-style size search operator so, unlike your emails, you cannot search for big files in Drive.

There’s however an easy workaround. While you are in Google Drive, go to bottom left corner and you’ll see a link that shows how much storage space you have used. Hover your mouse over that link and then choose Google Drive. Voila! The list you now see is sorted by size and the largest are listed at the top.

You can use the URL – http://ift.tt/1yjGn44 – to directly access the list.

The list only includes non-native file formats since the native Google files – like your Google Documents or Google Spreadsheets – do not count towards the available quota.

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The story, How to Easily Find the Biggest Files in your Google Drive , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 04/12/2014 under Google Drive, Internet.

Use the Reader Mode in Chrome for Android for a Better Reading Experience

Google Chrome for Android features a new Reader Mode that lets you read web pages on your mobile without the clutter. Previously you had to install bookmarklets to enable readability but not anymore as readability is now integrated in the recent releases of Chrome much like the Safari browser on iOS.

Read web pages without the clutter

While you are reading an article inside Chrome (it will only show up in text-heavy articles), you can click the “Reader” button near the address bar (see screenshot above) and the current page is instantly optimized for reading. The page header, the ads, the sidebar, the navigation and all the non-essential elements are instantly hidden while the typeface and layout is changed for improved readability.

Turn-on the Reader Mode in Chrome

If you are not seeing the Reader Mode button in your Chrome yet, that’s because it’s enabled by default. Tap the address bar in Chrome, type chrome://flags and you’ll get a list of flags that are available in your Chrome.

Scroll down until you see a setting that says “Enable Reader Tool Mode” and click Enable. Relaunch the Chrome app and you should now see the Reader button in your Chrome when you are on a text-heavy web page. It may not show up on every article page though.

The Reader mode in Chrome will also come handy for printing web pages or when you saving a page as a PDF on your Android.

chrome://flags works in Chrome for Android too

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The story, Use the Reader Mode in Chrome for Android for a Better Reading Experience , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 04/12/2014 under Android, Google Chrome, Internet.

Device Assist for Android

Google released an Android app that provides tips for using your device and helps you solve some of your device's issues. The app is called Device Assist and it's currently available to "US-based Nexus, Google Play edition and Android One devices running Android 5.0, Lollipop".



Device Assist detects some of the problems concerning your device and offers tips like "consider using a wall charger" or "screen brightness setting is battery intensive". For some of the tips, there's a "do it for me" option that automatically changes settings.

Google also provides tips that help you explore new features and improve the performance of your device. The list of tips is searchable and there a few useful tips when searching for things like "battery" or "screen".

Device Assist makes it easy to share information about your device with Google and to get access to live Google support. This option is only available for Nexus and Google Play Edition devices.

{ via Android Police }

Finding Music Key Enabled YouTube Videos

When Google announced YouTube Music Key, I expected that mobile users will be able to download and play in the background almost any music video. Unfortunately, these features don't work for many videos, especially for music videos from unofficial YouTube channels.



It's easy to tell if you can download or play in the background a video: look for the download button in the mobile YouTube app.

If the download button is there, you can tap the home button and the video will continue playing in the background.

For some reason, YouTube doesn't offer a search filter that allows you to restrict search results to videos you can download and play in the background. A good idea is to play YouTube's mixes or pick an album from the music card, when searching for an artist.

Why Google Inbox Doesn't Replace Gmail

When Google launched Inbox, many people wondered why it's a new product and not a Gmail upgrade. Jason Cornwell, a member of the Google Inbox team, answered this question in a Reddit AMA:

The way people use email has changed a huge amount since we launched Gmail. With Inbox, we took a step back and did a lot of research into how most people are using email today. What we found was that email works as a todo list for many people, that phone usage is starting to eclipse desktop usage, and that many people have negative feelings towards email because it feels like so much work. We built Inbox as a separate product because we didn’t feel like we could solve those problems by just adding more features on to Gmail. We needed to start from scratch to build a tool that really helps you stay on top of your life.

In many ways, Inbox is a simplified mail service optimized for mobile. It surfaces important information, helps you get things done and organizes your messages.



Will Inbox replace Gmail? Here's Jason's answer:

In the short term, no. In the very long term, we hope so. Inbox is something new - that's why we’re launching it as a separate product. We care deeply about Gmail and Gmail users, but in the long run as we add more features to Inbox and respond to user feedback we hope that everyone will want to use Inbox instead of Gmail. Ultimately, our users will decide.