Registering and signing in
Registration takes an email address and a password. After registering you are taken to the sign-in page — your first sign-in is what activates the session. Where configured, social sign-in (Google or Facebook) appears as an alternative; a social account needs no password at all.
Email verification is gentle: you can use your account before verifying, and the dashboard reminds you with a banner (with a resend button) until you click the link we sent.
Forgot your password?
Use Forgot password on the sign-in page. You will get an email with a single-use reset link that leads to a form for the new password. The confirmation message looks the same whether or not the address has an account — that is deliberate, so nobody can probe which emails are registered. This same flow is currently also the way to change a password you still know.
Claiming an upload made before you registered
If you uploaded a file without an account and then create an account, the upload can become yours — with two conditions worth knowing:
- it happens when you sign in (registering alone is not enough — sign in right after);
- stay in the same browser tab you uploaded from, and do it within 24 hours of the upload.
When it works, the file simply appears in your Drive — no extra step, no confirmation to click.
The devices page
Settings → Devices lists every signed-in device with its name and last-used time. Each row has a sign out action — the way to cut off a lost phone or a forgotten library computer. Deleting your account signs out everything everywhere at once.