Ane of the primary outstanding benefits of using a deject device, such equally a Chromebook, is knowing all of your work is automatically in sync with your Google Drive account. This syncing capability lends Chromebook users a level of security, knowing their data is always backed up.

A downside to many Chromebooks is the lack of local storage. It's an odd thing to be concerned most, given these are cloud-based devices, and even so plenty of time has been devoted to extolling the woes of minimal infinite.

The saving grace for many users is that most Chromebooks include an SD carte expansion slot, so you tin slap in a 256GB SD carte and have some serious infinite to utilize. Merely can you sync photos and videos on your SD carte to your Google Drive account? Why, yes, yous can.

See: Best Chromebooks of 2017 (CNET)

How to sync photos and videos on your SD card to Google Bulldoze

You accept to trick Chrome Bone into thinking there's something worth syncing on that card–in other words, that information technology contains photos and videos. At the fourth dimension of this writing, the characteristic only works for photo and video files. But, when you're on the go and you lot need to practise a quick dump of photos and videos from an SD bill of fare to Google Bulldoze, this is the way to go. Here's how.

When you insert the SD card into your Chromebook, if the arrangement discovers a binder named DCIM, it will automatically start scanning for images and videos. The SD card must have a folder named DCIM; if Chrome OS doesn't detect that particular folder, it will not scan the card. It is only within that DCIM folder that Chrome OS will scan for acceptable files.

The practiced news is that virtually DSLRs (and other camera types that use SD cards) automatically relieve images and videos into a folder named DCIM and will automatically create that binder. If your device doesn't automatically create a DCIM folder, you'll take to do that manually. The adjacent play a trick on would be ensuring that external device then saves files to that new folder (how/if y'all can do this will depend upon the device).

When y'all insert an SD bill of fare, open the Files app, navigate to the DCIM folder, and y'all'll meet a new Deject icon appear in the Files taskbar (Figure A).

Figure A

Once Chrome OS successfully scans all the files within the DCIM binder, the photos and videos volition automatically sync with your Google Drive business relationship and tin be found in your Google Photos binder. During the syncing, the cloud icon volition change to a progress icon. If you click the Cloud icon driblet-down (Figure B), it will display how many photos it is currently backing upwardly.

Figure B

Google, allow more file types to be synced from an SD card

The ability to machine sync an SD carte to your Google Bulldoze account through Chrome OS has been around since 2015, and information technology hasn't expanded much since its release. Google needs to allow for other file types to be synced from the SD card (information technology makes perfect sense why Google would outset with photos for the first iteration). Every bit it is now, the feature is limiting. Even and then, for those users that demand to upload a lot of images from an external device (such as a DSLR), the ability to practise so from a Chromebook makes life simpler.

I'd love to be able to auto sync whatsoever file type from an SD menu on a Chromebook–that would make transferring piece of work from one Google business relationship to some other (or from device to device) much easier. Pop in a coworker's SD card, open Files, and let Chrome OS practice its matter.

Brand this happen, Google.