Google Workspace Developer News: Managing Folders with Limited and Expansive Access with the Drive API

There are nine updates highlighted in this month’s Google Workspace Developer News. The news that caught my eye the most relates to updates to the Google Drive API and upcoming changes to My Drive folders with restricted access.

Google Drive API: Managing Folders with Limited and Expansive Access

Google recently announced that by 2026, it will stop allowing restricted access on specific files and folders in My Drive, instead consistently managing it via the limited access folder setting. These changes will align the My Drive experience with Shared Drives, which use an expansive access model where everyone sees the same items in a folder. For developers wanting to get ahead of the curve, there are several new fields that can be used. The Google Workspace Developer News episode gives an overview of these, and there is a new Google Developers Documentation guide on Manage folders with limited and expansive access. In summary:

Restricting Folder Access: To limit access to a folder, developers can set the boolean inheritedPermissionsDisabled field on the files resource to true.
Opt-in API Behavior: Developers can also opt in to expansive access API behavior in My Drive ahead of any future mandatory enforcement by setting the enforceExpansiveAccess request parameter to true on the permissions.delete() and permissions.update() methods.

Other Updates

Here’s a brief overview of the other updates covered in the Google Workspace Developer News video:

Apps Script Rhino Runtime Deprecation: Also already highlighted in Pulse, the Apps Script Rhino runtime will no longer function after January 31, 2026.
Google Meet API Enhancements: All meeting participants can query conference data, including the conference records, the conference artifacts, and the participant records, using the Google Meet API.
Google Meet Pre-Configurations: Auto-recording, auto-transcripts, and “take notes for me” can now be pre-configured within a meeting space when created. This feature is available through the Developer Preview Program.
Google Meet Media API: The Google Meet Media API is now available through the Developer Preview Program, granting access to real-time media from Google Meet conferences.
Reports API Updates: Google Chat now supports the customerUsageReports.get() and userUsageReports.get() methods for the Reports API.