Google Drive finally adds support for cut, copy, and paste shortcuts

Every once in a while, an app or service will add a new feature that we can’t believe it didn’t have already. For example, Google announced this week that it is rolling out support for cut, copy, and paste keyboard shortcuts to Google Drive on the web. Yes, that does mean that it wasn’t possible to use these commands prior to this update.

Google Drive gets support for common keyboard shortcuts

“You can now use familiar keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + C (or ⌘ + C on Mac), Ctrl + X and Ctrl + V to copy, cut and paste Google Drive files in your Chrome browser,” Google revealed in a blog post. “This saves you time by allowing you to copy one or more files and move them to new locations in Drive, and across multiple tabs, with fewer clicks.”

It’s hard to even wrap my mind around the fact that this wasn’t possible until now.

But that’s not all. If you copy a file from Google Drive into another document or an email, it will grab a link to the file and the title of the file as well. You can also create shortcuts to files instead of pasting that same file all over the place by hitting Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + Shift + V. Finally, if you want to open a file or a folder in a new tab, hit Ctrl + Enter. This should make it easier to open and view multiple files at once within your browser.

If you want to see what these shortcuts look like in action, here’s a helpful GIF:

When will the shortcuts be available?

Google says that the “new” keyboard shortcuts began rolling out for Rapid Release domains on Thursday and that the rollout will begin for Scheduled Release domains on June 1st. It will take 1-3 days for the feature to be visible to everyone, which means that every Google Drive user should be able to use the cut, copy, and paste shortcuts by June 4th.

It’s worth noting these shortcuts are only available on Google’s Chrome browser. If you’re using a different browser, you are going to have to continue living without these keyboard shortcuts. But considering that Google Drive launched over 10 years ago, you’re probably used to it, so I wouldn’t fret too much if I were you.

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