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You can get a whole lot of work done with just Web apps nowadays, but sometimes you simply need the power of full-fledged desktop applications like Photoshop or PowerPoint.
To make your life easier, Google is releasing a Chrome extension for Mac and Windows to let you launch desktop apps right from within Google Drive, no separate download process required.
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To use it, you just need to open up Drive, right click the file you want and select “Open With”. You’ll see a list of applications on your computer that support the file format.
Once you open a file in a desktop app, just be sure to save any edits, and they’ll be synced right back up to your Google Drive automatically.
If you’re a Chrome user, it’s a more seamless process than needing to download a file, open it on your desktop app, and then remember to re-upload it onto Drive if you make any changes. So if you want to give it a shot, you can get the new extension from the Chrome store now.
➤ Google Drive Blog: Launch desktop applications from Google Drive in Chrome [Google Drive Blog]
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