Google Drive search on iOS gets better filtering options

Google Drive for iOS now lets you filter searches using dropdown menus for File Type, Owners, and Last Modified, the company wrote on Friday in its Workspace Updates blog. The dropdown menus show up before and after a search, and relevant filter recommendations will show up as well as users type.

Google says the update is available to Google Workspace customers and individual subscribers, as well as anyone with a personal Google account on iOS. The feature hasn’t been rolled out for Android users yet, but Google says that’s coming, too.

Here’s a screen recording I made to show how it works:

The new filter update makes it much more pleasant to search and browse for files when you don’t know where they are. For instance, if you know you’re looking for a video stored in Drive but have no idea what it’s called, you can just tap the Videos file type, then choose “custom range” under the last modified and search for the time period you last touched it. I’d love to see this updated to let me filter by other types of dates or file sizes.

It’s a marked improvement to Google’s previous approach, which involved filter suggestions and swipeable filters. Turns out, dropdown menus are still the best. Who’d have thought?