Incident Report

Summary

On Tuesday, 15 July 2025, for a duration of up to 22 hours and 49 minutes, Google Drive users were denied access to the Google Drive for desktop application. Affected users received an error message ‘Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more’. This message was erroneously triggered and no data was programmatically wiped.

We deeply regret the disruption our Google Drive for Desktop users experienced. We recognize the impact this had on your businesses, and we are truly sorry for falling short of your expectations. We have investigated the root cause of the issue and are implementing measures to improve the resilience of our services.

Root Cause

The root cause of the issue was an update to Drive's policy configuration. As part of this update, the admin setting that restricts Google Drive for desktop to authorized devices had its default unintentionally changed from FALSE to TRUE. This change took effect for domains which hadn't previously overridden the setting.

As a result, a number of users were unexpectedly prevented from launching the Google Drive for desktop application, requiring them to restart the application. The impact was limited to Windows and Mac devices used by Enterprise customers. The incident began at 18:27 US/Pacific on 15 July 2025 and deteriorated further on 16 July 2025.

Remediation and Prevention

At 18:27 US/Pacific on Tuesday, 15 July 2025, a 1% rollout release began causing minor impact. As the release progressed, the situation escalated significantly and became evident on Wednesday, 16 July 2025 from an increase in support cases. Our engineering team was alerted at 09:25 US/Pacific and immediately began the investigation.

As the first step to mitigate impact, Google engineers deployed a client-side mitigation to all Google Drive for desktop clients by 11:47 US/Pacific on Wednesday, 16 July 2025. This deployment disabled Enterprise Mobility Management support within Google Drive for Desktop. While this aimed to prevent further application launch blocks, it wasn't guaranteed to reach all devices before the block signal.

Concurrently, a policy fix was deployed via a rollback. This rollback targeted the incorrect policy configuration that triggered the blocks, which completed at 17:16 US/Pacific on Wednesday, 16 July 2025.

We are deeply sorry for the length and severity of this incident. Google is committed to preventing a repeat of this incident in the future and we are completing the following actions :

• Improve the error message displayed to our users when devices that are not company owned are blocked from using Google Drive for desktop.
• Improve monitoring on the number and rate of policy related actions taken by Google Drive for desktop.

Detailed Description of Impact

On Tuesday, 15 July 2025 from 18:27 US/Pacific to Wednesday, 16 July 2025, 17:16 US/Pacific:

Google Drive

Approximately 1% users may have been prevented from launching Google Drive for desktop and encountered the error ‘Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more.’

As a temporary workaround, administrators were advised to manually disable the ‘Only allow Google Drive for desktop on authorized devices’ setting to prevent blocks on their managed devices.

Additional Information for Customers

Once the incident was mitigated, users who exited the application without taking any further action were able to access the application after they relaunched it using existing account configuration. Some users who may have disconnected their account using the button that was presented as an option, were able to regain access after signing into the application and performing additional actions to reconfigure any mirror roots and re-pin any files that required offline availability. These users who disconnected their account may also have had to download the files again that were previously cached.

Mini Incident Report

We apologize for the inconvenience this service disruption/outage may have caused. We would like to provide some information about this incident below. Please note, this information is based on our best knowledge at the time of posting and is subject to change as our investigation continues. If you have experienced impact outside of what is listed below, please reach out to Google Workspace Support using help article https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213.

(All Times US/Pacific)

Incident Start: 15 July 2025 18:27

Incident End: 16 July 2025 18:19

Duration: 23 hours, 52 minutes

Affected Services and Features:

Google Drive for desktop

Regions/Zones: Global

Description:

A subset of Google Drive users who had their account in Drive for desktop disabled, observed the error: “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more”. Despite the message, no Google Drive content was actually wiped from the users’ computers. The message was a result of a configuration change to the default admin policies. Google will complete a full Incident Report in the following days.

Customer Impact:

A subset of Google Drive users had their account in Drive for desktop disabled and observed the error: “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more”. Despite the message, no Google Drive content was actually wiped from the users’ computers.

The issue with Google Drive for Desktop has been resolved for all affected users as of Wednesday, 2025-07-16 17:16 PDT.

The issue was due to a configuration change to the default admin policies. Our engineers mitigated the issue by rolling back the configuration.

Action required: If any users are still experiencing issues, they should quit the Drive for desktop app and relaunch it.

We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue.

Summary:

Google Drive users may be unexpectedly logged out of Drive for Desktop.

Description:

The engineering team believes that the incident mitigation is complete and is confirming its effectiveness.

An estimated time of resolution provided is Wednesday, 2025-07-16 at 19:00:00 PDT.

We will provide more information by Wednesday, 2025-07-16 19:30:00 PDT with additional details.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms:

Google Drive users may experience being logged out of Drive for Desktop and see error “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more.” Only enterprise customers are impacted.

Workaround:

Administrators may go to the Drive for Desktop settings in Admin Console under Apps > Drive and Docs > Drive for desktop > Enable Drive for desktop and uncheck “Only allow Google Drive for desktop on authorized devices” For details see https://support.google.com/a/answer/7491144.

Summary:

Google Drive users may be unexpectedly logged out of Drive for Desktop.

Description:

We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive for Desktop, beginning on Wednesday, 2025-07-16 10:24:07 PDT.

Our engineers have implemented a mitigation strategy and have partially mitigated the issue.

The engineering team continues to work towards full mitigation.

An estimated time of resolution provided is Wednesday, 2025-07-16 at 17:00:00 PDT.

We will provide more information by Wednesday, 2025-07-16 18:00:00 PDT with additional details.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms:

Google Drive users may experience being logged out of Drive for Desktop and see error “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more.” Only enterprise customers are impacted.

Workaround:

Administrators may go to the Drive for Desktop settings in Admin Console under Apps > Drive and Docs > Drive for desktop > Enable Drive for desktop and uncheck “Only allow Google Drive for desktop on authorized devices” For details see https://support.google.com/a/answer/7491144.

Summary:

Google Drive users may be unexpectedly logged out of Drive for Desktop.

Description:

We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive for desktop, beginning on Wednesday, 2025-07-16 10:24:07 PDT.

Our engineering team has identified the source of the issue and is working on implementing a fix.

We will provide more information by Wednesday, 2025-07-16 13:30:00 PDT with additional details.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms:

Google Drive users may experience being logged out of Drive for Desktop and see error “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more.” Only enterprise customers are impacted.

Workaround:

Administrators may go to the Drive for Desktop settings in Admin Console under Apps > Drive and Docs > Drive for desktop > Enable Drive for desktop and uncheck “Only allow Google Drive for desktop on authorized devices” For details see https://support.google.com/a/answer/7491144.

Summary:

Google Drive users may be unexpectedly logged out of Drive for Desktop.

Description:

We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive for desktop, beginning on Wednesday, 2025-07-16 10:24:07 PDT.

Our engineering team has identified the source of the issue and is implementing a fix.

We will provide more information by Wednesday, 2025-07-16 12:30:00 PDT with additional details.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms:

Google Drive users may experience being logged out of Drive for Desktop and see error “Your administrator has restricted Google Drive access to authorized devices. You have been logged out, and all Google Drive content related to your account has been wiped from this computer. Please contact your administrator to learn more.” Only enterprise customers are impacted.

Workaround:

Administrators may go to the Drive for Desktop settings in Admin Console under Apps > Drive and Docs > Drive for desktop > Enable Drive for desktop and uncheck “Only allow Google Drive for desktop on authorized devices” For details see https://support.google.com/a/answer/7491144.