Top 6 Ways to Fix Google Drive Stuck on Making Files Available Offline

Google Drive comes with a cool feature that lets you access your files on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides without the internet. This is possible thanks to the offline functionality of Drive. However, the same feature can get on your nerves if Google Drive crashes while trying to make files available offline on your phone. Do not worry. You will find several ways to resolve the problem in this article.

You can see the Make Files Available notification from the main Google Drive app or Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Sometimes the notification doesn’t go away and gets stuck with a moving progress bar.

If your phone keeps showing “ 1 or more files are now available offline, ” the following six methods will help you stop this on Android, iPhone, and iPad.

1. Restart the phone

If this is the first time that the file provisioning notification is stuck and you can’t remove it, restart your phone. Hopefully after restarting you won’t see the notification anytime soon.

2. Clear the cache

If the Make Files Available Offline notification doesn’t go away on restart, it’s time to clear your Google Drive apps cache. To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open the settings on your Android phone. Go to Applications or Application manager or Applications and notification depending on the option available.

2nd step: Tap Google Drive under Installed or All apps.

Step 3: Tap Storage and then Clear Cache. Restart your phone.

Step 4: Likewise, search for Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets under All Apps. Also clear their cache.

Step 5: If the problem persists, tap Clear storage or data in step 3 instead of Clear cache for Google Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. Deleting the data will not delete your files. Find out in detail what happens when erasing data from an Android app.

On iPhone and iPad, you can clear the cache from the Drive apps. To do this, open Google Drive or other Drive applications (Docs, Slides, Sheets). Tap the three bar icon at the top. Then select Settings.

Then tap Clear cache. You also need to clear the cache using this method on Android. Know the steps in detail and what happens when clearing Google Drive cache.

3. Disable offline file support

Google Drive allows you to make files available for offline use in two ways. You can manually turn on offline file support or let Google Drive automatically make recent files offline.

Most of the time, the problem occurs due to the crash of a particular file that has been made available offline manually. So you should disable offline mode for problematic files.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Open the Google Drive app or other Google apps (Docs, Slides, and Sheets) that display the notification.

2nd step: Tap the three bar icon in the upper left corner. Select Offline Files from the menu. Here you will find all files accessible offline.

Step 3: Tap the three-dot icon next to the files with the offline icon. It’s a small circle with a check mark inside. You will see the icon next to Available Offline is green. Tap Available offline to turn it off. Restart the phone.

Hopefully Google will stop the notification now. If you need this file to be available offline, repeat the steps and tap Make Available Offline in the menu. Enabling and disabling it also fixes the issues. Find out in detail what Make Available Offline in Google Drive does.

Note: If you have multiple Google accounts added on your phone, tap the problematic notification. You will be redirected to the Google Drive app with the registered account causing the issue.

4. Turn off offline availability for recent files

Sometimes, offline support for recent Google Drive files can also be responsible for the problem. So try to disable the feature in the settings. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Drive app (Docs, Slides, or Sheets) which always shows the offline notification.

2nd step: Tap the three bar icon and select Settings.

Step 3: Uncheck the switch next to Make recent files available offline. Restart your phone.

5. Update the Google Drive apps

Unfortunately, if the Files Available Offline notification comes back (or even if it’s fixed), you need to update your Google Drive apps. There is a good chance that a bug in the application is causing the problem. So updating the apps will fix the problem. Open Google Play Store (Android) and App Store (iOS and iPadOS) and search for Google Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. Update them.

Point: Don’t know when an app needs to be updated? Find out when and how to update apps on Android and iOS / iPadOS.

6. Uninstall applications

If the problem persists, try uninstalling the Google Drive apps from your phone. Uninstalling Google Drive, Docs, Slides, or Sheets will not remove your app data. Reinstall the apps from the respective app stores after uninstalling them.

Offline files do not work

Usually, the “Files are now available” notification should not appear regularly on your phone. We hope the above fixes will resolve your issue. If you are unable to work with files without internet after trying to fix the above issue, check out different ways to fix Google Drive not working offline issue.