The Storage Drain
Google Docs is primarily a cloud-based application, but it includes an “Offline Mode” designed to let you keep working if you lose your internet connection. To facilitate this, Google Docs might automatically download and save your most recently opened documents directly to your computer’s local hard drive as hidden cache files. While this is brilliant for travelers working on airplanes, it is a significant privacy and storage concern for users working on shared computers, library terminals, or devices with very limited solid-state storage. You don’t necessarily want gigabytes of sensitive documents silently caching to the local machine.
Disabling Offline Caching
To protect your local storage and stop Google Docs from automatically saving files offline, you must disable the offline access feature across your Google Drive account.
Because Google Docs is intrinsically tied to Google Drive, the offline setting is managed centrally. Open your web browser and navigate to drive.google.com. Click the Gear icon in the top-right corner of the screen and select Settings. In the primary “General” tab that opens, look down the list of options for the section labelled Offline. You will see a checkbox next to the text “Create, open and edit your recent Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files on this device while offline.” If this box is checked, your browser is actively caching files. Click the box to uncheck it. A small prompt will appear at the bottom left confirming “Offline disabled.” Google Docs will immediately purge the local cache and stop downloading your files.