Google Drive has ditched the old video player and rollout a new one that has a modern layout with playback controls for easy viewing. This new video player is compatible with Android phone based on Material You.
Google Drive is one of the best file storage solutions that uses cloud-based setups to store multiple terabytes of videos Drive account. However, despite having the capabilities to hold plenty of videos, it's difficult-to-enjoy watching them on the Drive app.
Hence, Google Drive has made a significant change to make watching videos on the app enjoyable with the launch of a new video player on the Android app. This is not the first attempt to improve video player on Drive, the company has done a lot of work in the previous years to enhance Drive's multimedia capabilities.
In the previous years, Google introduced on Drive searchable video transcripts, DASH transcoders to speed up video loading, and instant playback for newly uploaded videos. In addition to this features, new video player is added to make your streaming experience palatable on Google Drive.
The Google Drive Video Player Interface
In October 2024, Google announced plans to update the Google Drive video player with a Material You design, a modern, visually appealing interface style that gives cleaner lines, vibrant colors, and intuitive controls, for its web version.
This update aimed to enhance the user experience by replacing the outdated YouTube-like layout. However, as of June 2025, this redesigned video player started rolling out to Android phones.
The design now features a sleek look with central playback controls, top-right options for captions and speed, and a bottom scrubber, all offering mobile users a smoother, more contemporary viewing experience. Let's break the features down:
- The Central Playback Controls Features: The redesigned layout has three buttons for playback control such as play, pause, and other playback functions. The three buttons are positioned at the center of the screen for easy access.
- The Top-Right Options: These buttons are for captions, full-screen mode, playback speed adjustment, and looping. They're conveniently located in the top-right corner of the screen, also for enhancing user control.
- The Bottom Scrubber: The video player also features a scrubber bar located at the bottom of the screen and you can use it for (allows) seamless navigation through the video timeline.
- Material You Design: Material You Design is Google’s modern design language that enhances user interfaces with vibrant colors, smooth animations, and personalized elements, adapting to user preferences like wallpaper colors. So, this sleek Material You makes Google Drive’s video player feel fresh, cohesive, and user-friendly.
- Availability: The updated interface is already rolled out to Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. If you haven't seen the latest updates yet, I will advise you to update your app.
Any update for Google Drive iOS users?
Updating Video Player for Google Drive iOS users isn't necessary. This is because when iPhone users are watching Drive videos on their iPhone or iPad, they are redirected to a layout specifically optimized for iOS or iPadOS. So, this is the major reason iOS users don't have to worry about Drive Video Player improvement.
Until the video player was improved on Android, many Android users prefer to use third-party video player applications like VLC, XPlayer, or RealPlayer to open their Google Drive Videos on their smartphones. This method is what iOS is doing for it users but it's an automatic redirect on iOS devices.
Google noticed that both the automatic and manual redirecting done by iOS and Android respectively can significantly make people living Drive. So, they might have upgraded the Video Player on Drive to prevent people from leaving the app when watching videos.
