Over the last few years, Google has optimized all its apps for large-screen devices like foldables and tablets. This helps deliver a better user experience on ourfavorite Android tabletsand has helped push third-party developers to optimize their apps for such devices as well. In November 2022, the company updated itssuite of Workspace apps to add drag-and-drop support, giving multitasking a major boost. Now, ahead of theGoogle Pixel Fold’s release, the Drive app is getting a foldable-optimized update.
Depending on the state of your foldable phone — opened, closed, or partially open, the Google Drive app will automatically move the various control options within the preview viewer to a more suitable location. The below image from Google showcases the different layouts.
If you use theGalaxy Z Fold 4or another similar book-style foldable, this layout optimization will make going through documents on Google Drive much easier.
Another minor change in Google Docs is the switch to paginated mode by default. When you open a document in Docs, it will display them with pages and page breaks to deliver a “more cohesive visual design between web and mobile.” The only exception here is if the document is set to pageless mode. There are some benefits to the latter, and you can follow our guide onhow to use Google Docs pageless formatto know more.
In paginated view, Docs will show a toolbar at the top with all the important formatting and editing tools.
Google says both these changes are already rolling out from last week for all Workspace account holders and will take no more than 15 days to complete.
Recently, theGoogle Play Books app was updated to introduce a new portrait dual-column view, perfect for foldables. With the impending Pixel Fold launch, expect more Google apps to receive foldable-optimized updates to fix any quirks and annoyances on big screen devices.
