Shared Drive Permission Levels Explained: Manager, Content Manager, Contributor & Viewer

Google Workspace shared drives use five permission levels: Manager (full control, including membership and the drive itself), Content Manager (can add, edit, move, and delete files), Contributor (can add and edit, but not move or delete), Commenter (view and comment), and Viewer (view only). These are different from the four levels in personal "My Drive," and the differences matter when you're setting up access for a team.

If you're an admin or team lead rolling out shared drives, this is the part that causes the most confusion. People assume shared drives work like regular file sharing, hand out the wrong level, and end up with either too many people able to delete files or too few able to do their jobs. Getting the levels right from the start prevents both problems.

How Shared Drives Differ From My Drive

Before the levels themselves, one concept underpins everything: in a shared drive, the organization owns the files, not individuals. In personal My Drive, every file has a single human owner. In a shared drive, files belong to the team, so they don't disappear when an employee leaves—a major reason organizations move to them.

That shift changes how permissions work. Instead of sharing files one by one with named people, you grant someone a role on the whole shared drive, and that role applies consistently to everything inside it. The five levels below describe what each role can do across the entire drive.

The Five Shared Drive Access Levels

Here's what each level can and can't do, from most to least access.

Manager

Managers have full control. They can do everything other roles can, plus manage who belongs to the shared drive, change other members' access levels, move content into and out of the drive, delete the shared drive itself, and restore deleted files. Whoever creates a shared drive starts as a Manager.

Best for: Drive owners, team leads, and admins responsible for the drive's structure and membership. Keep this group small—Managers can remove people and delete the entire drive.

Content Manager

Content Managers can add, edit, move, and delete files and folders within the drive. This is the default level for new members, and it's the right one for most active contributors. What they can't do is manage membership or delete the shared drive itself.

Best for: The everyday working members of a team who need to create and organize files but shouldn't control who has access.

Contributor

Contributors can add new files and edit existing ones, but they can't move or delete files. This is a subtle but important distinction: a Contributor can do the work without the risk of accidentally reorganizing or removing shared content. (One quirk worth knowing: in Drive for Desktop and on ChromeOS, Contributor access behaves as read-only; full editing happens in the web interface.)

Best for: Collaborators you trust to edit but want to protect from accidental moves or deletions—useful in larger teams where structure matters.

Commenter

Commenters can view files and leave comments and suggestions, but they can't edit content directly, move files, or delete anything.

Best for: Reviewers and stakeholders who need to give feedback without changing the work—clients, approvers, or cross-team partners.

Viewer

Viewers can open and read files only. No commenting, editing, moving, or deleting.

Best for: People who need reference access to finished or read-only material, and for shared drives that serve as a repository of completed work.

Quick Comparison

Access level	View	Comment	Add & edit	Move & delete	Manage members
Manager	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Content Manager	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗
Contributor	✓	✓	✓	✗	✗
Commenter	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗
Viewer	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗

Choosing the Right Level

A simple rule keeps teams out of trouble: grant the lowest level that still lets someone do their job. Default to Content Manager for active workers, step down to Contributor when you want to prevent accidental deletions, and use Commenter or Viewer for anyone who only needs to review or read. Reserve Manager for the one or two people who genuinely administer the drive.

The most common mistake is making everyone a Manager "to keep things simple." That gives every member the power to remove others or delete the drive—a real risk as teams grow and people come and go. The second most common mistake is the opposite: locking everyone to Viewer and then fielding constant requests for edit access. Matching the level to the actual need avoids both.

How Shared Drive Roles Interact With File-Level Sharing

One detail trips up even experienced admins: a member's shared drive role isn't always the whole story. Individual files inside a shared drive can be shared separately with specific people, including people who aren't members of the drive at all. So someone might have no role on the shared drive yet still be able to open a particular file because it was shared with them directly.

This is powerful but creates blind spots. A file in an otherwise locked-down shared drive can be exposed externally through a one-off share, and the membership list won't show it. When you audit access, you have to look at both layers—who's a member of the drive, and who has direct access to individual files. Treating the membership list as the complete picture is the most common way external access slips through unnoticed.

Moving From My Drive to Shared Drives

If your team is migrating from individually owned files in My Drive to shared drives, the role mapping isn't one-to-one. There's no "Owner" in a shared drive, because the organization owns everything—the closest equivalent is Manager. An "Editor" in My Drive maps roughly to Content Manager or Contributor depending on whether you want them to be able to delete and move files. Plan the mapping before you migrate, decide who genuinely needs Manager, and default everyone else to Content Manager or lower. Doing this deliberately at migration time is far easier than untangling over-broad access later.

It's also worth setting a default for new members before you invite anyone. Since new members arrive as Content Managers unless you specify otherwise, deciding up front whether that's appropriate for your drive—and adjusting it for drives that hold sensitive or finished material—prevents a slow drift toward everyone having more access than they need.

Don't Forget Access You've Already Granted

Shared drives make ongoing access easy to set and easy to forget. Members accumulate, external collaborators get added for one project and never removed, and individual files inside a shared drive can still be shared out separately—creating access paths that aren't obvious from the membership list. Over time, "who can actually see this?" becomes genuinely hard to answer by hand.

Here are your options for keeping that under control. Option 1: Overdrive scans your Drive and surfaces who has access to what across all your files and folders—including external domains and forgotten link shares—so you can review and revoke access in one place instead of checking each drive and file manually. Option 2: audit manually by opening each shared drive's "Manage members" list, reviewing every member's level, and checking individual files for separate shares. It works for a drive or two, but gets impractical fast across an organization.

Either way, the habit matters more than the method: review shared drive membership periodically, downgrade access when project roles change, and remove people when collaboration ends.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between Content Manager and Contributor?

Content Managers can move and delete files; Contributors can add and edit but not move or delete. Use Contributor when you want to prevent accidental reorganization or removal.

Who can delete a shared drive?

Only a Manager can delete the shared drive itself. Content Managers can delete files within it, but not the drive.

Are shared drive levels the same as My Drive permissions?

No. My Drive uses Viewer, Commenter, Editor, and Owner. Shared drives use Manager, Content Manager, Contributor, Commenter, and Viewer, and the files are owned by the organization rather than an individual.

What level do new shared drive members get?

By default, new members are added as Content Managers, which lets them add, edit, move, and delete files.

Can a Viewer or Commenter delete files in a shared drive?

No. Only Managers and Content Managers can delete files. Contributors, Commenters, and Viewers cannot.