If you can’t access Google Drive or any of the company’s productivity apps, the first thing to check (rather obviously) is that your PC or laptop is connected to the internet. If the browser is up to date and you’ve tried restarting it, and even restarting your PC, you’ll be wondering if Google Drive is down or if the problem is exclusive to your machine. There are three very quick and simple ways to check whether others also have a problem with Google Drive:
1. Check Google’s own status reports for G Suite
Google maintains a G Suite Status Dashboard, which you can view at any time right here. You can also check out the G Suite Help Centre, and check for any known issues.
2. Check Twitter for Google Drive updates
You don’t need to be a Twitter member to find out if others are tweeting about Google Drive. Just head to Twitter.com, type Google Drive into the search bar, then see what comes up. If there is a problem it should become obvious rather quickly.
3. Check Down Detector for Google Drive downtime
By now you’ve probably worked out whether or not Google Drive is down for everyone or just you, but we’ve thrown in a third option – DownDetector – because one of the features we love about it is its live outage map (see the image at the top of this page). This shows you exactly where people are reporting problems, so even if Google Drive is working fine in the whole of the US you might find it’s having problems in London. Down Detector will also give you a verdict as to whether there are problems or a good service, and show you outage complaints on a timescale. See whether Google Drive is down using DownDetector. We hope that you’ve now established whether Google Drive is down for everyone or just you. And though this won’t help you this time, it’s worth setting up Google Drive to work offline just in case you experience this problem again. Marie is Editor in Chief of Tech Advisor and Macworld. A Journalism graduate from the London College of Printing, she’s worked in tech media for more than 17 years, managing our English language, French and Spanish consumer editorial teams and leading on content strategy through Foundry’s transition from print, to digital, to online - and beyond.
