Snapdragon-powered Windows PCs have been around for almost a year now, but they’ve been missing one key app: Google Drive. While a beta of the Arm64 version released last year, it only became “generally available” yesterday.
The app works in exactly the same way as all other Google Drive apps, allowing users to store files and access them from any device. The lack of Arm64 support for apps like Google Drive has been one of the biggest barriers for Windows on Arm, as it results in various inconveniences for users that tend to drive them away. Rather than the hardware, it’s likely to be software-based problems like this that trigger the high return rate of Snapdragon-powered Windows PCs.
More and more apps are adding support now, but like Google Drive, some are taking far too long. The market share for Snapdragon PCs is still pretty low (though it has grown a lot compared to pre-X Elite numbers), so a lot of companies and developers don’t seem to feel an urgent need to get their Arm64 apps out the door.
It’s a hard-to-fix problem, even for a big name like Microsoft. Compared to older attempts to push Windows on Arm, this attempt has definitely gone much further — but it will probably take some more time before the average consumer can pick up a Windows on Arm PC without even noticing the difference.
Anyone on Windows 11 can download the new app, and anyone who participated in the open beta will automatically be updated to the stable version.
