Google drive linux client

How to Use Google Drive in Linux

Last updated September 13, 2021 By Munif Tanjim 57 Comments

Brief: While Google Drive is not officially available for Linux, here are tools to help you use Google Drive in Linux .

Google Drive is an integral part of the Google ecosystem. It offers 15 GB of free storage which is shared across your Gmail account, Google Photos, various Google and Android services.

Since its debut in 2012, we’ve seen official Google Drive clients for Windows, OS X, Android, iOS. But, unfortunately, an official Linux client is yet to see the light of the day, if ever. This deliberate and continual ignore by Google has prompted Linux users to question if Google hates desktop Linux?

However, in the world of Linux, there’s always an alternative or workaround. Here we’re going to see such alternatives ways you can use Google Drive in Linux .

Some applications mentioned here are not open source. They are listed here because they are available on Linux and the article’s focus is on Linux.

Best tools to use Google Drive in Linux

The list here is no particular order. I have just listed a few Google Drive desktop clients for Linux along with some other hacks.

1. Insync

Insync is the most feature-rich Google Drive desktop client available out there. You’ll find almost everything you want from a Google Drive client in it, including multiple account support, desktop notification, symlink support etc.

It’s available for all major Linux distros and the installation process straightforward. It offers a beautiful GUI as well as the command-line interface.

The only downside is that Insync is neither free nor open source. Insync provides a 15-day free trial period. After that, it’ll cost you about $29 one-time payment for a single account and for multiple accounts, Insync has per-year pricing plans. If you have no problem with that, we can safely say that Insync is the Google Drive desktop client you’re looking for.

3. Rclone

Rclone is actually more than just a Google Drive client. It is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from various cloud storage services, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, OneDrive etc. The installation and usage documentation can be found on their official website. For configuring Google Drive with Rclone, read this.

It’s completely free and open source. You can find the source code in the GitHub repository of Rclone. If you are comfortable working with the command-line interface, you can pick this one.

There are some GUI implementations of this tool like Rclone Browser that let you use Rclone in a slightly easier manner.

3. overGrive

overGrive is yet another feature-rich Google Drive desktop client. It includes almost all the features from Insync with some exceptions, such as no symlink support. It provides a nice GUI and an interactive setup process. overGrive supports all major Linux distros and desktop environments. It’s also available in multiple languages.

Though overGrive is not free, its price is far less than that of Insync. The license fee for overGrive is only $4.99. It can be a good choice for Google Drive desktop client.

4. Drive

This one’s a little bit interesting. Drive was originally developed by Burcu Dogan, while working on Google Drive platform’s team. So, this is the closest thing we have to an official client.

It’s a command-line tool written with GO programming language. It doesn’t have background sync feature. It’s designed to upload/download files in a push/pull style. Frankly, it’s a little difficult to use it for everyday purposes. You’ll find a complete guide for Drive on its GitHub project.

Platform specific installation methods can be found here.

5. GNOME

If you use GNOME as your desktop environment, you’re in luck. Starting from version 3.18, GNOME has baked in a Google Drive feature in their file manager Nautilus.

If you add your Google Account in GNOME Online Accounts, Nautilus will automatically have Google Drive added to its sidebar as a remote filesystem. It’s not actually a desktop client. But you can do some cool things like drag&drop file uploading, opening Google Drive files directly from Nautilus, copying files from Google Drive to your local filesystem etc.

Your pick?

It’s totally disappointing that Google hasn’t yet come forward with an official Google Drive client for Linux despite the growing popularity of Linux. Until it does, these alternatives are all we have.

Speaking of alternatives, there are many other free cloud storage services and some of them even provide native Linux clients. I use pCloud and MEGA for my personal photo backup.

Which one of these is your favorite? Do you have any other suggestions to use Google Drive in Ubuntu or any other Linux? Are you facing trouble using any of these methods? Whatever the reason is, you’re always welcomed to use our comment section.

Like what you read? Please share it with others.

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Google Drive Client for Linux (2021)

Home » Google Drive » Google Drive Client for Linux

It’s 2021 and Google still doesn’t offer an official Linux client for Drive, and at this rate they might never. Thankfully there are many great options out there. We’re going to take a look at what is available.

There are three main types of clients:

1. Mount Google Drive as a network drive
2. Sync your Google Drive to a local folder
3. Access Google Drive in an FTP-like interface for graphical transfer.

Mounting Google Drive on Linux

Mounting your GSuite account as a network filesystem is one of the best ways to access your files in the cloud. A network filesystem accesses your files on-demand, when you use them. This differs from a traditional sync-style client which mirrors remote content in a local folder.

On-demand access has huge benefits over a traditional sync-style client. First and foremost, it doesn’t pre-download any of your data, and files you aren’t using don’t take up valuable hard drive space. You access just what you need, when you need it. Google’s own Drive File Stream product replaced their sync client for business users for these very reasons.

Drive mounting options

On Linux like there are a few options available. Free open-source projects like google-drive-ocamlfuse or gcsf are designed for a more technical user or somebody who requires headless access.

These projects don’t come with some of the features you might expect if you’re used to operating on Mac or Windows and are generally not for the faint of heart. But they do work, and they are free.

There are also commercial options available such as ExpanDrive that do have a full desktop client with advanced features such as offline sync, background synchronization and many other powerful improvements over a standard network drive.

1. ExpanDrive

If you’re looking for a more powerful option to mount Google Drive on Linux ExpanDrive is a great option.

The ExpanDrive software has been available on Mac and Windows for over 10 years and has millions of users. Starting with ExpanDrive version 7 on a wide variety of Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Red Hat, Linux Mint, CentOS, Debian and most other popular distributions.

What makes ExpanDrive different are a variety of features to ensure a stable and high quality end-user experience.

ExpanDrive has multi-threaded background uploads, a full graphical user interface to facilitate bulk transfer, integrated search and version management along with much more. The main product page goes into detail on many of these features.

ExpanDrive supports personal Google Drive accounts as well as GSuite Drive accounts, including support for Team Drives. It securely connects to the Google Drive API and transparently supports ADFS and 2FA.

ExpanDrive runs We provide deb and RPM based installers and have an integrated auto-updater to help you stay up to date.

Download ExpanDrive

Installation Instructions

Desktop based installations

ExpanDrive ships primarily as a desktop app with a user interface for advanced configuration and management. We also have a server edition that runs headless for Windows and Linux Servers.

Debian and Ubuntu based desktop distributions

For Debian and Ubuntu based distributions the easiest way to get started is to download and install the latest .deb package (64 bit), either through the graphical installer or via the command-line with the following command.

Installing the .deb will also automatically install the apt repository and code signing key to enable easy update using the system package manager.

You can install the repository and key manually with the following script

Then you update the package cache and install ExpanDrive using:

RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS based desktop distributions

Download our latest .rpm package (64-bit) and use yum to install ExpanDrive and the required dependencies.

Installing the .rpm will also automatically configure the yum repository and code signing key to enable easy update using the system package manager.

You can install the yum repo manually using the following script:

Then update your package cache and install Expandrive using dnf (Fedora 22 and above):

Server/Headless Edition

Head over to our ExpanDrive Server Edition page for instructions and packages for Windows and Linux servers. ExpanDrive Server edition is designed to run unattended, at boot [versus login], and provides drives that can even be re-shared on the network.

Amazing Reviews

“ExpanDrive lets you mount remote sftp drives and it actually works! I.e. no long delays or dropped connection in the middle of a save.”

“My first impression after reading ExpanDrive’s promotional description last week was that it sounded too good to be true. One week later, I’m pretty sure it actually is that good.”

John Gruber, Daring Fireball

ExpanDrive connects your files as a fast network drive and accesses all of your data on demand. You can browse and open any file from within your file manager or from the command-line. ExpanDrive builds native access to Google Drive into Linux.

2. google-drive-ocamlfuse

google-drive-ocamlfuse is probably the most popular and actively maintained open source option to mount Google Drive [GCSF is no longer being active developed].

It’s written in OCaml and is designed to be run from the command-line. There are deb packages maintained by the author, but beyond that you’re own your own. Checkout the project github page for instructions on how to install.

Once you’ve installed google-drive-ocamlfuse you start the authentication process by running

This command sets up the default configuration directory in

/.gdfuse/default and launches your system browser to do an oauth authentication to get the API key. Now perform the filesystem mount by simply running:

mountpoint is the absolute path to your intended mountpoint in the filesystem. Google-drive-ocamlfuse supports multiple accounts via the -label command-line option, letting you mount different labels to different mountpoints. Run the fusermount -u command to perform an unmount.

3. GCSF

GCSF is another FUSE based project that runs on Linux (and Mac) that runs a fairly similar manner to google-drive-ocamlfuse. Th primary author, Sergiu Pușcaș spun the project out of his diploma thesis and remains the primary author. In the spirit of developing in trendy languages, GCSF is written in Rust. Sergiu notes, as of April 2019 that he has very little time to dedicate to the project. It is definitely still maintained, but perhaps not under active development anymore. If you’re looking for details on how to try it out, check his github project page.

Sync-Style clients

There are many more open-source sync style clients available on Linux for Google Drive. Most of them have fairly dubious levels of quality and support. There are also some more polished commercial options available as well.

1. Insync

Insync is the most feature-rich sync client for Google Drive on Linux. The user interface runs out of your system tray and is fairly similar to other desktop sync clients on Mac and Windows. It offers support for multiple accounts and selective sync. It is a $49.95 one-time license fee to get all the features.

2. overGrive

You can think of overGrive like a less expensive version Insync. It only costs $4.95 and comes with a few extra features, like back-only, and converting Google Docs to office files for offline editing.

3. Rclone

Rclone is a free open-source app that bills itself as rsync for cloud storage, which is a reasonable approximation of how this works. Rclone is designed as a command-line utility to push and pull data from the cloud, rather than a continuous sync solution like overGrive or Insync. It support a huge array of cloud storage back-ends, which is certainly nice to have.

in Boston. ©2004-2021 ExpanDrive, Inc.

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10 Best Google Drive Clients for Linux

Google ecosystem has become an integral part of our daily lives, from Google-powered smartphones to a suite of Google apps like GMAIL are part of our daily lives. In the data-driven world, it is important to keep data secure as well as accessible from everywhere. Well, Google Drive offers that solution in the most efficient way possible. You can securely store all your important data on Google Drive and access it from anywhere by just logging into your google account.Like other apps in Google Suite, Drive has become a very important cloud storage app in our life. It offers free storage up to 15GB which is more than enough and can be used across GMAIL, Google Photos, and other Google services.

So today I am going to share with you Google Drive clients you can use to access your Google Drive account on Linux and other distributions.

1. Insync

Insync is one of the most reliable Google Drive clients you will find for Linux and its distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, and Debian. It comes with a 15-day free trial after that you need to purchase to use it further.

In three simple steps, you can access your Google Drive data on Linux using Insync. Just Download Insync, Install, and login to your Google account you are there. Its Selective sync 2.0 feature helps you sync all your files and folders both locally on the computer or in the cloud storage.

Also, you can access all the files stored on Google Drive locally in the Linux file manager. You can also access multiple Google drive accounts. Google docs automatically get converted to Open Document format for Libre Office compatibility. Insync is great for professional use as you can give offline access to your team to Google’s shared drive for a smooth workflow.

2. Rclone

Rclone is a command-line tool that helps you manage and store your data on cloud storage. Rclone is highly capable of with features like sync, transfer, encrypt, cache, union, and mount. It supports over 40 cloud storage services including Google Drive.

Rclone is a reliable tool to securely store your important data on Google Drive and access it from a Linux computer. If somehow data transfer stops due to poor connection it helps you restart the transfer file from the last completed file transfer.

It is a smart tool that uses server-side transfer to transfer data from one provider to another eventually minimizing the use of local bandwidth.

3. OverGrive

OverGrive is another Google Drive client for Linux and its distributions like Ubuntu. Like Insync, OverGrive is also a paid application that comes with a 14-day trial after that you have to purchase to continue using it.

Front-end GUI is provided by OverGrive and Google Drive is in the back, it is an easy to use and feature-rich tool. Features include converting Google Docs to different office file formats.

OverGrive and Insync are quite similar in terms of features and reliability only difference is their pricing. Now it’s up to you to decide which one to use.

4. GoSync

GoSync is a Python-based Google Drive client for Linux and its distributions. It is an open-source client, comes with a clean and easy to use GUI. It is not a perfect Google Drive client but still, it can be useful.

One of the limitations is it syncs all the directories, there is no option to sync a particular directory. But it can very well be fixed in future versions.

Sync is by default turned on and it can be paused/resumed whenever you want. Sync is performed after every 10 minutes. You can also rename, move, or delete a file.

5. Grive2

Grive2 is forked from Grive which discontinued now but Grive2 is an open-source implementation of Google Drive client for Linux users. It supports two-way synchronization between Google Drive and the local directory.

You can limit upload/download speed to match your network quality. It has some limitations but can be neglected as it is a very reliable Google Drive client. It supports Drive REST API and partial sync.

6. CloudCross

CloudCross is a multi-cloud client for Linux and its distribution. You can manage your cloud storage accounts on Dropbox, Yandesk. Disk, OneDrive, and Cloud Mail.ru along with Google Drive.

It is a feature-rich cloud storage client that helps you synchronize files and documents between a local device and Google Drive. It is completely free to use cloud storage client licensed under GNU GPL v2.

Like other clients listed here, it also supports bidirectional document conversion from Google Docs format to MS Office/Open Office file format.

7. Gdrive

Gdrive is a tool that lets you access your Google Drive account from the command line in Linux and its various distros. Don’t worry once you get used to commands for each operation after that it’s all easy as the commands are simple and easy to remember.

This tool is easy to download and install. Its detailed documentation available on GitHub makes it very easy to use. It is a great tool to save your important files in an encrypted manner on the drive.

8. Google-drive-ocamlfuse

This tool lets you mount Google Drive on Linux and its distributions. It is another command-line tool but very easy to implement and use.

Features include full read/write access to ordinary files/folders, read-only access to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, duplicate file handling, and multiple account support.

9. DriveSync

DriveSync is a command-line client for Google Drive which lets you easily sync file between your local drive and Google Drive cloud storage. It lets you upload, download & share documents, photos, and other important files with anyone from anywhere.

You can also choose whether some files should be synced or not. The tool is developed in Ruby and very easy to use and reliable. Even though it is a command-line tool it is quite easy to use once you get familiar with it.

10. GNOME Online Accounts

GNOME users don’t need to install any client to use Google Drive as it provides access to Google Drive by default for Linux users. You just need to go to GNOME online accounts, log on to your Google Account there and that’s it, you are ready to use Google Drive on Linux.

So, these are the 10 best Google Drive client for Linux and its various distributions. As we still wait for the official Google Drive client for Linux from Google, tell us which one you pick from the above list and why. @linuxhint and @SwapTirthakar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a Google Drive client for Linux?

You may be pleased to hear that there is in fact a Google Drive client for Linux. In fact, there’s more than one.

The cheapest option costs circa $5. However, it’s first available with a 14-day free trial. It’s called overGrive. All you need to do is download the installer for your Linux distro, and you’re good to go. It will run in your notification area and automatically sync offline copies of your files, in very much the same way as the Google Drive tool does on macOS and Windows.

But, just to give you a quick heads up, there have been bugs reported with this Google Drive client.

But, overGrive is not your only option. There’s also another commercially available Google Drive client that runs on Linux (and other operating systems) called InSync. It costs a little more money, however. After a 15-day free trial, you will have to pay $30.

The reason they can get away with charging so much for this Google Drive client is because it has a few extra features such as supporting multiple Google Drive accounts.

Although InSync works in a very similar way to overGrive, the company has been around longer, and you won’t get as many bugs.

For more information on this, please check out our other article titled 10 Best Google Drive Clients for Linux .

How do I connect Google Drive to Linux?

Although there are several different Google Drive clients for Linux available to take advantage of, as per our article, 10 Best Google Drive Clients for Linux , the method that Google officially recommends for connecting to Google Drive on Linux is to head over to the Google Drive website, which will work on the whole suite of available browsers.

How do I upload to Google Drive from Linux?

You may be pleased to hear that you can upload to Google Drive from the command line. And it’s pretty straightforward, too. Here are the steps you need to follow:

Step 1: Secure shell onto your Linux box and download the Linux version of gdrive from GitHub.

Step 2: A new file will show up in your home directory. Simply rename this file to gdrive.

Step 3: Assign this file executable rights. Like this: chmod +x gdrive

Step 4: Install the file to your usr folder

Step 5: Run the gdrive program with any parameter. Then copy the text it gives you to your browser and paste the response code Google gives you into your secure shell window.

Step 6: Then run gdrive list, and you are done and are ready to upload your files to Google Drive from Linux.

About the author

Swapnil Tirthakar

A Software Engineer who loves football and passionate about traveling. I often spend my free time playing with gadgets and exploring new possibilities in tech world. I am Linux enthusiast and have about 6 years of experience in web development. I have good command on Python, Java, SQL and system security.

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