Google is constantly rolling out new features for its "Workspace" services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Docs. The company rolled out "search chips" for Gmail in 2020, which made it easier than ever to filter search results based on attachments, senders, or other data. Google is now adding similar functionality to Drive, according to a new blog post.

Google wrote on the official Workspace Updates blog, "in November 2021, we announced a beta for search chips in Google Drive, which makes it easier for users to find relevant files faster and eliminates the need to perform multiple searches or sort through irrelevant results. Search chips are now generally available for all users."

Just like with Gmail, new buttons and dropdown menus (collectively called "chips") appear after you perform a search in Google Drive. The chips allow you to quickly filter items by location, file type, document authors, last modified dates, and other data points. You could already filter results by using search parameters (such as adding "-dancing" to a search to remove results that include the word "dancing"), but the new search chips are much easier to use.

Google says it has implemented a few improvements since the initial beta test period last year. Spelling suggestions now appear alongside the search chips, and there are new date options available for the "Last modified" chip.

The new functionality is rolling out to everyone, including both personal Gmail accounts and Workspace accounts, and it should be live for all accounts sometime in the next 15 days. However, it seems to be exclusive to the Drive web app for now — the Google Drive apps for Android and iOS still have the same basic search functionality.

On a related note, Google started testing Drive file suggestions on Chrome's New Tab Page in September of last year. The Android app received a Material You update that same month, which also included a new widget.