This article is for administrators. To learn how to use Drive File Stream, see the user Help Center.

Deploy Drive File Stream to your organization for a quick and easy way for you and your users to access your Drive files from your computer.

How it works

With Drive File Stream, you stream your Drive files directly from the cloud to your Mac or PC, freeing up disk space and network bandwidth. Because Drive files are stored in the cloud, any changes you or your collaborators make are automatically updated everywhere. You’ll always have the latest version.

You can also make Drive files available for offline access. These cached files sync back to the cloud when you’re online, so the latest version is available on all your devices.

Install or deploy Drive File Stream

1. Verify that Drive File Stream will work for your organization. You can use Drive File Stream on these operating systems:
   • Windows: Windows 7 and up. Windows Server 2012 and up.
   • Mac: El Capitan (10.11) and up. For High Sierra (10.13) or newer, follow these steps.

   For the best user experience, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest OS version available for your machine. Also make sure to use a supported browser.

2. If you haven’t already done so, turn on sync for your organization. Make sure to allow Drive File Stream and specify whether users can see Drive File Stream download links.
3. (Optional) At the same Admin console page where you turned on sync, check Only allow Drive File Stream on authorized devices (Beta). This restricts access to Drive File Stream to only devices managed by your organization.
4. (Optional) At the same Admin console page, check Allow users to enable real-time presence in Microsoft Office from Drive File Stream. This lets users see when someone is editing shared Microsoft Office files, and can help prevent editing conflicts.
5. Install Drive File Stream on each user’s computer using one of these options:
   • Let each user install Drive File Stream on their own machine. For this option, users need administrator rights to their computer.
   • Download the Drive File Stream .exe file and deploy it in silent mode:
     Windows
     Mac

   Drive File Stream comes packaged with Google Update (Windows) or Google Software Update (Mac) to automatically update Drive File Stream on your users’ computers. You can configure policy settings for these applications if you don’t want Drive File Stream to automatically update.

If you have problems installing Drive File Stream, restart the computer where you’re having trouble and try again.

Tip: As an administrator, you can find information about the Drive File Stream installation in the Admin console. You can verify the version number, last sync date, or the amount of offline data on a device.

Uninstall or reinstall Drive File Stream

Known issues

• You can’t currently duplicate Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
• Drive File Stream currently doesn’t support ARM-based Windows laptops and tablets, including the Microsoft Surface Pro X.
• Anti-virus software: Certain virus detection and security software can interfere with the operation of Drive File Stream. If you have virus scan software running on your computer and repeatedly see the error “Drive File Stream encountered a problem and has stopped”, try excluding the Drive File Stream from your virus scan. If that doesn’t work, reach out to support for instructions on how to make File Stream work with your antivirus software.
• Pop-ups: Some users on Drive File Stream version 41 and prior may report seeing repeated pop-ups to sign-in. This can happen if they’ve had their account deleted or disabled. If you no longer wish to continue using Drive File Stream and are encountering this issue, we recommend uninstalling Drive File Stream.On Windows, you may have to manually stop Drive File Stream from running in order to uninstall it.
  Steps to address this issue on Windows:

Related topics

• Configure Drive File Stream
• Drive File Stream release notes
• Drive firewall and proxy settings
• Capture Drive File Stream logs for support