Google Drive quietly (and then pulled) introduced a file creation limit for all users

Google has introduced a limit on the number of files you can create and save to Drive. As I mentioned earlier before Ars Technica And Cnet. The company confirmed to the edge The change would have allowed you to create a maximum of 5 million files in Drive even if you paid for additional storage. But Google retracted the change shortly after, saying it would “explore alternative ways to ensure a great experience for everyone.”

We recently released a system update to Drive Items Restrictions to maintain stability and improve performance. Google said in a tweet. “While this only affected a small number of people, we are reversing this change while we explore alternative ways to ensure a great experience for everyone.”

The 5 million file limit only applies to the number of files you want Creates In Drive – Not Total Files subscriber to your drive. This means that you could have had over 5 million files in the system as long as they weren’t created just by you.

Google spokesperson Ross Richenderver originally said the change came as a way to “maintain strong performance and reliability” and that it should help prevent “misuse” of the company’s systems. If you reach the limit, Richendrfer said you’ll get a notification and that you can contact Google Support to address the issue.

While 5 million may seem like a ridiculous number of files for a single person to upload, some users have actually reached that limit. in Posted on Reddit spotted before Ars Technica And Cnet, a user with 7 million files in Drive said Google suddenly stopped them from creating new files in February despite not hitting the 2TB storage limit they were paying for. Meanwhile, many other users are on Google problem tracker The site says they encountered the cover file around the same time and were initially under the impression it was a bug.

As pointed out in the Reddit post, the file cap means that anyone with 2TB of storage with an average file size of over 400KB will hit their file limit before they run out of storage space. In other words, some users may pay for more storage space than they can actually use unless they choose to compress their files into zip folders.

Based on user feedback, it appears that Google did not alert those affected of the newly implemented limit before It did, leaving them scrambling to move or compress redundant files once the policy went into effect. It also doesn’t appear that Google has updated the Google One or Workspace support Pages to note the cap, even though it says so Shared workspace engines It can contain a maximum of 400,000 files. While the majority of people probably don’t have 5 million files stored in Drive, Google could have at least given those who do a proper warning.

Update April 4, 3:11 a.m. ET: Updated to say Google has gone overboard.