With Google Drive, you can quickly view many file types online, including PDFs, Microsoft Office files, and many image file types.
You can view any file that you upload or sync to Google Drive as long as it's 25 MB or less. To view a file, click on the file's title in Google Drive on the web or by following a link shared with you.
Here are some things you can do from the Google Drive viewer:
- Show revision history of the file (if you have owner or edit rights)
- Change the sharing settings (if you have owner or edit rights)
- Download and print by going to the File menu and selecting Download as...
- Search text on the page using the search box in the upper right.
- Add your comments in all types of files.
- Preview any public HTML file from your Drive. Click the "Preview" button in the toolbar, and then share the URL from the details pane so that anybody can view your web page.
Keyboard shortcuts for the Google Drive viewer
| Action | Shortcut |
| Open | Ctrl + O |
| Download | Ctrl + S |
| Play/Pause Video | Space |
| Compact controls | Ctrl + Shift + F |
| Edit description | Ctrl + Shift + E |
Supported file types
Google Drive lets you view these file types:
- Image files (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .TIFF, .BMP)
- Video files (WebM, .MPEG4, .3GPP, .MOV, .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV, .FLV)
- Text files (.TXT)
- Markup/Code (.CSS, .HTML, .PHP, .C, .CPP, .H, .HPP, .JS)
- Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
- Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
- Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
- Apple Pages (.PAGES)
- Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
- Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
- Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
- Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
- Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
- PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
- TrueType (.TTF)
- XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
- Archive file types (.ZIP and .RAR)
Preview your files
From your Drive on the web, you can also quickly preview a file before opening it. To preview a file, right-click on it and select Preview. A preview of the file will appear. When previewing a file, it's easy to flip through nearby files by clicking the arrows on the left and right sides of the preview window. This is a great way to scan through a group of photos you've stored in your Drive.
By default, certain types of files will be opened in the preview view when you click on them from your Drive. Files without a dedicated app of their own, such as images, will by default open in the preview view. To change the default settings, follow the steps for making an app the default app for a given file type.
Keyboard shortcuts available when previewing files
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Find | Ctrl + F (⌘ + F on a Mac) |
| View next item | L, or the right arrow key |
| View previous item | H, or the left arrow key |
| Scroll down | J |
| Scroll up | K |
| Close | Esc |
Supported file types
Supported file types
Google Drive viewer helps you preview over 16 different file types, listed below:
- Google Docs
- Google Sheets
- Google Slides
- Google Forms
- Google Drawings
- Image files (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .TIFF, .BMP)
- Raw Image formats
- Video files (WebM, .MPEG4, .3GPP, .MOV, .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV, .FLV, .ogg)
- Microsoft Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
- Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
- Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF)
- Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
- Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
- PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
- TrueType (.TTF)
- XML Paper Specification (.XPS)
Search your uploaded files
You can search for text in PDF and image files by:
- Typing a query in the search box in Google Drive on the web.
- Viewing a file with Drive and using the search box in the upper right.
You'll be able to search the first 100 pages of any text documents or text-based PDFs that you've uploaded. You'll also be able to search for text found on the first ten pages of any image PDFs on your Drive.