By Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google is rolling out a new feature to Google Workspace customers: the ability to lock Google Drive files.
While a file is locked, no one with any level of access can make edits, comments, or suggestions; essentially, it’s in read-only mode until you unlock it. The company wrote in a blog post announcing the change that file locking started rolling out to Rapid Release domains yesterday and will do so over the next 15 days, while those on Scheduled Release domains will start seeing it on September 20th, also with a 15-day rollout period.
Restricting a file in Google was already something you could do with the Google Drive API or through file approvals — a similar feature that lets you, say, request approval for a draft that’s locked…