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Set the Default Access For All New Shared Drives

Define the default sharing restrictions

  1. In your Google Admin console 
  3. Select Sharing settings.
  4. To apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select a child organizational unit or a configuration group.
  5. Next to Shared drive creation, select the default restrictions for all new shared drives.
    • Prevent users in your organization from creating new shared drives
    • Prevent full-access members from modifying shared drive settings
    • Prevent people outside your organization from accessing files in the shared drive
    • Prevent non-members of the shared drive from accessing files in the shared drive
    • Prevent commenters and viewers from downloading, copying and printing files in the shared drive

Note: If Prevent full-access members from modifying the shared drive’s settings is not checked, full access members can override any of these default restrictions for individual shared drives.

Key things to remember

  • If a document is moved in to a shared drive with default sharing restrictions:
    • These default settings override any document-level sharing settings, which might result in some users losing access to documents. If members will lose access, a warning is displayed before the file is moved. 
    • The document’s protections still apply if the shared drive has less restrictive protections. 
  • If a document is moved out of the shared drive to My Drive within the same organization:
    • The document’s original sharing settings are used instead. This can result in users gaining or losing access.
    • Document-level restrictions always stay in place unless specifically changed or removed from the document. Shared drive restrictions only apply to documents when they are in the shared drive. 
  • Changes to these default restrictions do not affect existing shared drives:
    • If these default restrictions are changed, users are not removed from the shared drive or individual file permissions. 
    • If the shared drive restrictions are more restrictive than the file permissions, however, some users might lose access to the file. 
    • If the shared drive default restrictions are removed, some users might regain access.