Google Drive has quietly introduced a file creation limit for all users

Google has quietly introduced a limit on the number of files you can create and save to Drive, As I mentioned earlier before Ars Technica And Cnet. The company confirmed to the edge You can create a maximum of 5 million files in Drive even if you pay for extra storage.

To be clear, the 5 million file limit only applies to the number of files you use Creates In Drive – Not Total Files subscriber to your drive. This means that you can have over 5 million files in the system as long as they are not created just by you.

Google spokesperson Ross Richenderver says the change comes as a way to “maintain strong performance and reliability” and that it should help prevent “misuse” of the company’s systems. If you reach the limit, Richendrfer says you’ll get a notification and that you can contact Google Support to address the issue.

While 5 million may seem like a ridiculous number of files for a single person to upload, some users have actually reached that limit. in Posted on Reddit spotted before Ars Technica And Cnet, a user with 7 million files in Drive said Google suddenly stopped them from creating new files in February despite not hitting the 2TB storage limit they were paying for. Meanwhile, many other users are on Google problem tracker The site says they encountered the file cover around the same time and initially thought it was a mistake.

As indicated in the Reddit post, the file cap means that anyone with 2TB of storage with an average file size of over 400KB will hit their file limit before they run out of storage space. In other words, some users may pay for more storage space than they can actually use unless they choose to compress their files into zip folders.

Based on user feedback, it appears that Google did not alert those affected of the newly implemented limit before It did, leaving them scrambling to move or compress redundant files once the policy went into effect. It also doesn’t appear that Google has updated the Google One or Workspace support Pages to note the cap, even though it says so Shared workspace engines It can contain a maximum of 400,000 files. While the majority of people probably don’t have 5 million files stored in Drive, Google could have at least given those who do a proper warning.