The Workspace Clutter
If you use Google Chrome while logged into a corporate or educational Google Workspace account, you may have noticed a new feature on your New Tab page. Right below the search bar, Chrome automatically displays a large panel titled “Google Drive,” which surfaces files, spreadsheets, and documents that Google’s algorithm thinks you might want to open next.
While this is designed to save you a click, it is often a massive privacy risk if you are sharing your screen in a meeting, as the titles of sensitive financial documents, HR files, or draft reports are plastered across the center of the browser. Furthermore, it completely ruins the clean, minimalist aesthetic of the New Tab page. You can easily remove this Drive integration.
How to Hide Google Drive from the New Tab Page
You can turn off this file surfacing feature using the New Tab customization menu.
- Open Google Chrome and click the + button at the top to open a completely blank New Tab.
- Look in the bottom right corner of the browser window. You will see a small button that says Customize Chrome (it usually has a pencil icon next to it). Click it.
- A side panel will slide out on the right side of the screen.
- Look for a section titled Cards or Modules.
- In this section, you will see a toggle switch specifically labelled Google Drive (which shows “files you’ve recently opened or edited”).
- Toggle the switch to the Off position.
The large file suggestion panel will immediately disappear from the center of the page. Your New Tab page will return to being a clean, blank slate, ensuring your recent document history remains private when you open your browser.