The FILE_ID is unique for every file in Google Drive. When you upload any file in Google Drive and share it, the shared link looks like this: Create Direct Download Links and Skip the Web Viewer Thus if a user has Photoshop on their computer, the PSD file that you have shared through Google Drive will open in Photoshop and not in their web browser. The native file viewer is useful but sometimes you may want to bypass the built-in Google Docs viewer and force the browser to download the file instead of opening it. The /preview is useful when you need to embed a document, spreadsheet or presentation from Drive in your web page using the IFRAME tag as in this live example. Here’s a Google Sheet, Google Document and Google Slides presentation in preview mode that is less-cluttered without any menus and toolbars and thus loads faster.

You can view the same document in a clean, reader mode using the link: So if the original share link of a file in Google Drive is: You can view native Google documents in reader mode (sans the Google UI) by simply replace /edit in the Google Drive file URL with /preview. Replace FILE_URL with the full http link of the online document and anyone can view your file in the browser itself. You can use this web viewer to view online files without having to download the files to your computer. Google Drive includes a built-in web viewer so people can view your shared files - from Microsoft Office documents to videos to AutoCAD drawings - directly in their browser. This is common knowledge but Google Drive has plenty of URL tricks up its sleeve that will make these simple Drive links even more powerful. Open any file in Google Drive, click the Share button and you’ll get a URL (link) that others can use to access your file. With Google Drive, you can store files in the cloud and share them easily with anyone.

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