How to disable Google Drive email spam and centralize file changes and requests in one place

If you use Google Drive as much as I do, then you’ll know all too painfully well how many emails you get whenever someone makes a change to a file, invites you, or requests access, among many other things. Today, I’m going to show you how to use the Google Drive bot inside of Google Chat to automatically ping you when these types of alterations occur in your files, and how to turn off all of the insane number of emails that normally hit your Gmail inbox when these changes are made!

This should leave you with zero incoming emails for this kind of stuff that you’ll need to delete after addressing, and instead, you just check Google Chat to follow up on your commitments. So far, it’s been a game changer in my workflow, so I wanted to share with you!

To start, let’s turn off those annoying Google Drive emails. Visit https://drive.google.com/drive/settings and locate the option that says “Get all updates about Google Drive items via email.” Uncheck that box to stop receiving these notifications via email – trust me, you’ll thank me later.

You can also uncheck the boxes for notifications such as “Newly shared items,” “Requests for access,” “Comments, suggestions, and action items,” and “Approvals.” However, I recommend keeping these options enabled as the chat bot relies on them to function properly. If you use the Chrome to receive pings about web apps you use, there’s an additional option to receive notifications of Drive changes right through the browser.

Now, let’s add the Google Drive app in Google Chat. Visit Chat on the web and locate the plus icon situated to the right of the active chats in the left-hand sidebar. Click on it to get a pop up dialogue box. You will see a search bar where you can type ‘Drive’. Install the app to start a chat with the bot directly. Alternatively, you can integrate the Drive bot into any Chat Space by visiting the Space’s options and configuring it there, which is pretty cool too.

Once you have the Drive app installed and have initiated a chat with the bot, you will have a direct message conversation in your list. Upon opening said chat, you will be asked if you want to turn on notifications. You can also access the Drive settings we discussed earlier directly from here.

That’s it! By following these steps, you can streamline your Google Drive experience while collaborating with others, eliminate the need for all of the email spam Google sends you, and centralize all your file-related updates in one place. The Google Drive chat bot in Google Chat becomes your go-to tool for managing and staying updated on your files – pretty neat, right?