Android is getting a new “Local File Backup” feature for Google Drive

Google today updated its Google System Services Release Notes page, introducing a new feature that adds a kind of local file backup via Google Drive. The details of how it works are mostly a mystery, but that’s how Google does these things.

In an update to Google Play Services (v26.06), Google say that they add the following on phones:

[Phone] The new local file backup feature lets you automatically save your downloaded documents to Google Drive so they’re safe and accessible from all your devices.

There are no other notes with it, but this is pretty obvious because they are adding a new local file backup feature that should automatically save your downloaded documents to Google Drive. This doesn’t seem to be the same or even related to backing up and restoring data when moving from one device to another or after a factory reset. This sounds like a proprietary backup feature for your downloaded documents specifically.

I imagine Google will share more about this in the near future, including how to check this. There’s a world where you don’t want every document on your phone automatically uploaded to Google Drive, right? So yes, we would like to know more about where and how this can be enabled/disabled. As soon as we know, we’ll let you know.