Offline Google Drive access

Zorin OS has a deflault support for Google Drive, but not for accessing selected files offline like on Windows. Is there an app that install Google Drive with offline access ?

On GNOME Software I found Open Drive that's a Linux version of Google Drive. But reading its description and that of the other results it's not clear whether they allow offline access to files as well. Typically in a software you can (in fact, for example, on Gmail you can access e-mail even offline) but it's not necessarily the case that all developers of this type of software allow the user to access files even offline. This is simply to avoid the fact that it's perhaps seeing a file that had been deleted from the server and then at the next synchronization it see that file is lost. You can search Google Drive on GNOME Software and read more details at the software's official link. If it's not specified if the software allows you to access files offline you can ask the developers (there is usually at least an e-mail address or a dedicated forum) or just try one of the results right away to see if you can access files offline as well. The alternative is using the browser's offline mode if available.

There's something called "VGrive" in Software - seems to be what you're mentioning. Have not used it though so, can't really say. Says it has file syncing and all, may be what you're looking for.. As far as offline access - not too sure.. When I use my G-drive it's like mounting a USB or external disk.

Yeah when i use the system's gdrive thing it mounts it like a USB stick, but it can't be mounted if you're offline.

Correct - that's an online storage mount, you will need internet to use.

I just tried VGrive, and sadly, when i try to log in my google account, Google says that the app sended an incorrect request, and just get stuck here.

One of many reason why I moved my stuff to Mega.

Their pricing is off the charts, are you happy with the service so far though?

Aye. i'm a happy customer. I have lite pro version for 4.99. Then you get 400 GB - which is more than enough for me to backup etc.
I know you can get 1 TB for free at Google, but their services stink when it comes to Linux.

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Awesome. I invested in a My Cloud Home Duo from Western Digital a few years ago. They abandoned the software completely, so i am just accessing it locally through the smb protocol. Works like a charm ^^

I know there are, but if they work is an entirely different topic. I know the kde plasma desktop has optional google drive integration that can be installed separately, but from my testing, it works less than half of the time: you may be able to log in and see your files, but being able to open them can require a few tries (and I don't even remember if the files were saved locally anyway)

However, the (unofficial but fully functional) onedrive client does save it to the computer and allow offline access. That is why I moved from google drive to onedrive, even if it's at the cost of having just 5 gb as opposed to google's 15 gb

To use this, you would first need to install the terminal version of the onedrive client, as this depends on that. This is how you would install it (before installing the GUI):

Step 1: Add the OpenSuSE Build Service repository release key, as that's the repository we will get it from, since the version from the repositories that zorin has access to by default has a version that is older than what is supported:

wget -qO - https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-ubuntu-onedrive/xUbuntu_22.04/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/obs-onedrive.gpg > /dev/null

Step 2: What we just added was the release key so it can work. Now we add the repository itself:

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/obs-onedrive.gpg] https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-ubuntu-onedrive/xUbuntu_22.04/ ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/onedrive.list

Step 3: We update the packages lists:

sudo apt update

Step 4: Now we install the program itself:

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests onedrive

And since managing it from the terminal isn't very comfortable, now we can install the GUI frontend that I sent before these instructions. For that, you can follow the instructions on there to build it from source OR download the appimage. I personally use the appimage because I didn't have much free time when setting it up, but the instructions for building it from source seem clear and simple and shouldn't be too hard to follow.

Again, this would be assuming you are fine using onedrive instead of google drive. There must be options with google drive out there, but I haven't done enough research to find them myself.

I find a bit ironic how google, even after benefiting from linux with android (the most used OS globally if we include all platforms) and chromeOS (a bit less used but slowly gaining popularity) and overall being a contributor to the linux kernel and sponsor of some linux projects, some of their services are worse supported on GNU/Linux than Microsoft's.

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I'm not very a OneDrive user, so I'l search another solution.

I would have to say that's on the VGrive side then.. Evolution was like that with G-stuff - earlier versions wouldn't connect correctly to Google but, it was an auth issue. That might be the case - VGrive may be behind on their end..

Whenever I do use my G-drive in Zorin, though, I do have to have internet for it to become active. I don't even know if the Windows app can do offline activity then sync when online or not - never used it in Windows.

But.. offline file stuff with your G-drive may need something else in Zorin. I just don't know what.. Been out of town for work and such for over a month - fun! I'll see what else is out there though. Something may pop up..

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