Google Drive for Desktop Beta now supports Windows 11 ARM64 devices

Software support continues to be a thorn in the side of Windows 11 ARM64 adoption, arguably more so than on Apple's M series Macs. While Microsoft's Prism emulator offers superior x86 emulation than its previous efforts, native app performance will rarely fall short of their emulated equivalents. Developers have been gradually introducing ARM64-optimised apps, most recently with Signal Messenger.

To that end, Google has now released a beta version of Drive for Desktop specifically for Windows 11 ARM64 devices. Thus, the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 (curr. $899 on Amazon) that we reviewed earlier this year should now be compatible with Google's popular cloud storage service. The same should true of all other Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite-powered devices, though.

Please note that there are some caveats for the time being. For instance, this version of Drive for Desktop is currently in beta. Additionally, it does not support the Outlook Meet plugin. As a result, Google recommends only working with backed-up or non-critical data. If you are still interested in this early release, then you can download the 279 MB installer hosted on Google Drive. Please see Google's forum post for more details.