Web apps often lack the keyboard shortcuts you might expect in desktop application, and to that point, Google Drive is just now adding support for common desktop shortcuts.
Google announced in a blog post that several new keyboard shortcuts are available for manipulating files in Google Drive. Starting with the basics, you can now Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+X to cut, and Ctrl+V to paste. If you copy a file, you can also do Ctrl+Shift+V to create a shortcut instead of creating a copy. Finally, selecting a file and clicking Ctrl+Enter will open the file in a new browser tab. If you’re on a Mac, you use the ⌘ key instead of Ctrl.
The shortcuts allow you to move and copy files without diving into Drive’s menus or right-clicking files, which can massively speed up file management. Google also says that copying a file will save its link to your computer’s clipboard, so if you paste the file into an email or other text area (instead of Drive), you get a link to the file.
Google has made other improvements to the Drive and Docs web apps over the past few weeks. Selecting multiple text blocks at the same time started rolling out earlier this week, dropdown chips and table templates arrived in May, and improved support for Markdown formatting showed up in March.
The new keyboard shortcuts are rolling out more quickly than most other new Docs and Drive features, as they should be available for everyone within 2-3 days. However, they’re only offered in the Drive web apps — it would be handy to have the shortcuts on iPads and Android tablets when a keyboard is connected. Google says that the only supported web browser is Chrome, but it’s possible other Chromium-based browsers might work.
Source: Google Workspace Blog
