Migrate from the Google Drive Android API
The Drive Android API is deprecated as of December 6, 2018 and will be fullyturned down on February 1, 2023.
Timeline
| Date | Drive Android API status |
|---|---|
| December 6, 2018 | Deprecation ispublicly announced. Existing clients will be able to access the API normally, but should immediately commence with migration efforts. New clients must not use the API. |
| October 21, 2019 | The Drive Android API is removed from the Google Play Services SDK distribution. Apps will be unable to build until removing the Drive Android API dependency, but existing builds will be unaffected. The Drive Android API public documentation will no longer be available. |
| March 3, 2022 | The Drive Android API is deprecated and all API calls are non-operational. Clients must migrate by this date. |
| February 1, 2023 | The Drive Android API will be fully turned down and all connection attempts will be unsuccessful. |
Use the Drive REST API
The Drive REST API offers the same functionality as the Drive Android API,including ways to:
- Share and collaborate as you expect from Drive. You canmanage permissions or prompt the Share dialogto users as needed. The REST API also allows for commenting on files,allowing your app to interact with the conversation around a file.
- Search for files using
files.list,based on traditional indexing oryour own customized, indexable text. - Detect changes to files through theChanges collection and to any shared withthe user throughshared drives.
- Export and convert Google Docs so that your app can easilyopen a user’s document.
To ease client migration efforts, asample app is provided whichdemonstrates each of the proposed replacements above. It also shows how tocreate, modify, and query for a user's Drive files using the REST API. If youhave any issues, check out thegoogle-drive-api tag on StackOverflow.
Migration
Since the Drive Android API is deprecated, and all API calls arenon-operational, make sure your app is no longer calling the API. To do this,remove the code that initializes the API:addApi(Drive.API).
If you don't migrate from the Drive Android API, and your app attempts to callthe API, the following error message is returned:
com.google.android.gms.common.api.ApiException: 17: API: Drive.API is notavailable on this device. Connection failed with:ConnectionResult{statusCode=API_UNAVAILABLE, resolution=null, message=null}
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Last updated 2025-12-11 UTC.