Dear Google Drive User,

We are writing to let you know that starting October 13, 2020, Google Drive is making a change so that its Trash behaves more consistently with the rest of Google applications (such as Gmail) with regards to automatic deletion. This means that any file that is put into Google Drive’s ‘My Drive’ trash will begin to be Automatically Deleted after 30 consecutive days in the trash. Items in trash will still continue to consume quota and your storage will still continue to be shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos.

Please note that starting October 13, 2020, any files already in a user’s trash, will remain there for 30 days. After the 30-day-period files that have been in the trash for longer than 30 days will begin to be automatically deleted.

What does this mean for me?
Any file that has been in the Google Drive trash for longer than 30 days after October 13, 2020 will be automatically deleted forever, regardless of whether or not you have acknowledged any in-app messaging. We will be showing in-app messaging in Drive starting September 15, 2020 and in our Editors products (such as Google Docs and Google Forms) starting September 29, 2020.

A few things to note:

Files in shared drives trash are already automatically deleted after 30 days.
These changes affect items that are trashed from any device and any platform.
There is no impact to Backup and Sync behavior.
What do I need to do?
You can always restore files from trash before the 30 day time window.
If you are using Google Drive on Android or iOS, please update to the latest versions so you can be updated on the most recent in-app notifications.
Sincerely,

Google Drive team