Google Drive currently keeps all your deleted items in the trash unless you empty it. However, the company is changing that behavior next month. Starting October 13, Google Drive will automatically delete items in the trash after 30 days.
That doesn’t mean that the existing trash items will get deleted on October 13, though. The 30-day count starts on October 13 and files will remain until they hit this timeframe.
“This change matches the policies of other G Suite products and services, such as Gmail. This will help ensure behavior is consistent and predictable for users across G Suite products, and will help make sure that items users trash are actually deleted as expected,” says Google.
If you’re an administrator, Google points out that you can still restore items from a user’s trash for up to 25 days for active users. Take a look at Google’s official policy change notes below:
- Admins can still restore items deleted from a user’s trash for up to 25 days for active users.
- Retention policies set by admins in Google Vault are not affected by this change, unless they become obsolete as they are now redundant. Learn more about retention rules for Drive.
- These changes affect items that are trashed from any device and any platform.
- Files deleted via Drive File Stream will be purged from the system trash after 30 days. There is no impact to Backup and Sync behavior.
- Files in shared drives trash are already automatically deleted after 30 days.
- Items in trash will still continue to consume quota.
Google will send in-app notifications to inform users about this change. The banner will show up in Drive starting today and Google will start showing it in other Gsuite products like Google Docs and Google Forms from September 29.
