Technologies

Google Drive Has a 5 Million Item Cap, Even if You Have Storage Space Left

Reddit users came to this unfortunate realization, forcing them to either delete or consolidate millions of items.

Google Drive now limits users to 5 million items. A Google Workspace spokesperson confirmed the change in an email Monday evening.

This comes as a Reddit user posted a thread Monday saying Google had imposed a 5 million item limit on peoples’ Drive accounts, without prior warning. The Reddit user said people began receiving «Upload Failed» notifications around Feb. 14 for any action, including creating a new empty folder.

«To maintain strong performance and reliability, individual users are limited to 5 million total created items in their Google Drive,» a spokesperson from Google Workspace said. The spokesperson went on to say this change affects only a small number of users and recommended deleting some files.

For those with a plethora of files, suddenly being asked to remove millions of items is a major inconvenience, as noted in a report created on Google’s issue tracker. One user in the UK said their business in the animal health space has been critically hit by this change. It’s caused a major disruption for the «tens of thousands of users in-practice and their work on a daily basis.»

Others are wondering why, if there’s a hard limit, Google didn’t provide any guidance. The rollout of this change may not be going smoothly either, with some users saying that even at 1 million items, they can’t create a new folder.

For many users and businesses, storing files online is often more convenient than local storage. The overall cloud storage market was valued at $78.6 billion in 2022, according to Markets and Markets.

People can upgrade their Google One account, the service that contains Gmail, Drive, YouTube and others, to have additional storage. This storage can go all the way up to 30TB. Google One competes with Microsoft’s OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive and Box. Of course, Google One integrates better with Google Workspace apps like Docs and Sheets.

Some Google One competitors also have file limits.OneDrive for Business has a limit of 50,000 items per folder. But it’s uncertain if Microsoft has a hard cap on the number of items overall. Dropbox, on the other hand, says there’s no limit.

Microsoft, Amazon and Box representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

It seems that regardless of a person’s Google One plan, whether it be 100GB or 20TB, the 5 million item limit applies. As a result, users with small file sizes are likely to hit the item limit before they hit the storage limit: Someone on a 2TB plan would have to exceed an average file size of 400KB to run out of storage before they hit the item limit. So, unless a person is storing large files like photos and videos on their drive, it’s possible that some are paying for more space than can realistically be used.

Alternatively, other Reddit users pointed out that compressing files into a .ZIP folder ends up counting as one item.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #463

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 463 for June 9.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Todays NYT Strands puzzle features a bunch of mysterious words. Some are a bit difficult to unscramble so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: What you see isn’t what you get

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hiding in plain sight

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CALL, CALLS, FALL, FALLS, SAME, SEAM, LAND, ROSE, COVE, CANE, CANES, FLUME, FLUMES, DIGS, MEAL, COLA, CARD, CASE

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

MASK, CLOAK, COVER, FACADE, DISGUISE, CAMOUFLAGE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is FALSEFRONT. To find it, start with the F that’s two rows over from the far left and two letters down. Wind around into a question mark.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #729

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 9, No. 729.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Do you play the NYT Spelling Bee? If you do, you should be able to ace the purple category in today’s NYT Connections puzzle. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Control-C.

Green group hint: Don’t wait till the last minute.

Blue group hint: Pals to plan a heist.

Purple group hint: Think another NYT online game.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Keyboard shortcut commands.

Green group: Secure in advance.

Blue group: Crime organization.

Purple group: Spellling Bee ranks minus a letter.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is keyboard shortcut commands. The four answers are paste, print, quit and save.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is secure in advance. The four answers are book, order, request and reserve.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is crime organization. The four answers are crew, family, ring and syndicate.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Spelling Bee ranks minus a letter. The four answers are genus, goo, mazing and slid. (Genius, good, amazing and solid.)

Technologies

I Made Google Translate My Default on iPhone Before a Trip and It Saved Me More Than Once

Google Translate supports far more languages than Apple’s app, and it’s easy to make the switch.

If you’re traveling overseas this summer, the Google Translate app can come in handy to quickly translate a road sign or conversation. The latest Google Translate update allows you to pick the app as your default translation app for Apple iPhones and iPads running iOS and iPadOS 18.4 and later. Previously, you were limited to the built-in Apple option.

Google began leveraging AI to boost Google Translate’s offerings, adding 110 languages last year to increase its total support for 249 languages. Compare that to Apple Translate, which supports 19 languages. Neither Google nor Apple responded to a request for comment.

Both apps offer voice and text translation, including a camera feature that lets you instantly translate by pointing your camera at text. Both also allow you to use translation features without an internet connection, which can come in particularly handy when traveling to more remote locations.

After using both, I found that the Google Translate picked up speech a little quicker so I didn’t have to constantly repeat myself, and the audio pronunciations were a little easier to understand than on Apple Translate. I switched to Google Translate as the default on my iPhone, and here’s how you can, too.