14 DAY TRIAL // Google has made a silent update for a number of iOS apps, including Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides to remove support for passcode, Touch ID, and Face ID.
While the company has remained completely tight-lipped on the reasons for this decision, several users confirmed on the company’s Google product forums that advanced locking options are no longer available in the said apps.
“I have a couple of google drives and I was able to use a passcode on one of them to open it. That feature has been disabled. I was able to switch back and forth and liked that one of my google drives was protected. It’s now gone,” one user explained.
“Under settings there is a section “Passcode”, this is where I was able to set up a passcode and Touch ID, when entering it reads “Passcode lock is no longer available in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets or Slides. If you haven’t already protect your device with Settings > Touch ID & Passcode.”
No option to lock access to Google apps
iDownloadBlog speculates that the reason for this quiet update could be the integration with Apple’s Files app which is part of iOS since version 11. Apple’s file manager offers support for several large cloud-based storage services, including OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive, but when a passcode or different authentication system is used, access files is not possible.
Users are provided with an error that reads “Files cannot be used with a passcode,” and it’s believed this is the reason why Google rolled out this quiet update.
The more surprising part of the story is that Google hasn’t said a single thing about this update and the change has been made rather quietly, despite this clearly impacting a substantial number of users.
It remains to be seen if any information will be provided on why Google removed lock support on its apps, but for the time being, there’s no way to restrict access to Google’s apps when running on iOS.