Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Google is finally rolling out Drive’s new local file backup feature for Android devices.
We’ve been tracking the feature for months and can tell you exactly how it would work.
Android will use Google Drive to store backup copies of your downloaded files, but there are some caveats to how this will happen.
Google’s latest February Play System update is here, and it includes a short but intriguing item in the changelog: [Phone] With the new local file backup feature, you can automatically save your downloaded documents to Google Drive, ensuring they are safe and accessible from any of your devices.
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If that sounds familiar, it should. We’ve been tracking this exact feature for months through APK teardowns. Now that Google has finally acknowledged it publicly, we can clear up the confusion and explain what this feature is and isn’t.
How will the new local file backup feature work on Android? Android is adding a dedicated backup option for your Downloads folder, something the platform has never properly supported before. We first uncovered the feature back in August and shared some more details about it in December.
For starters, this local file backup feature will only cover downloaded files on your Android device, not your entire internal storage. Android will use Google Drive to store these backup copies, similar to how Google Photos handles images and videos.
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