Google Drive allows users to store and share files; to edit documents (using Google Docs), spreadsheets (using Google Sheets), and presentations (using Google Slides) with collaborators and each account comes with 15 GB of free storage (Google Photos and Gmail included). As awesome as it is, Google is yet to provide an official client app for Linux.
We have covered desktop client apps that you can use in the meantime, but because you might have missed a couple of them we have decided to compile the top 5 into a list for you to review. Today, therefore, we bring you the Top 5 Google Drive Clients for Linux.
1. Grive2
Grive2 is an independent open source implementation of Google Drive’s client for Linux.
It is written in C++ and interacts with Google Drive via its REST API. It features single directory synchronization, dry-sync, and partial sync.
After downloading it, run it to begin syncing and you’ll be good to go.
2. CloudCross – Multi-Cloud Client
CloudCross enables the synchronization of local files and directories across several cloud services.
It features support for Google drive, Cloud Mail, and Microsoft’s OneDrive; an optional direct file upload via URL, and automatic bidirectional document conversion from MS Office and Open Office document format to Google Docs.
3. RClone – Rsync for Cloud Storage
Rclone is a command line-based synchronization app for directories. Apart from being an excellent desktop client app for Google Drive, you can sync it with your Amazon S3, Dropbox, and Yandesk accounts, among others.
Rclone features one-way directory sync, syncing between two different accounts, an encryption e.t.c.
4. google-drive-ocamlfuse
Don’t be frightened by the name, google-drive-ocamlfuse is a CLI fuse-based filesystem backed by Google itself, and with it you can perform directory operations on your Google Drive account.
It features syncing with multiple accounts, access to Google Drive’s trash directory, and read-only access to Google docs, sheets, and slides.
5. GoSync
GoSync is a GUI-enabled Google Drive client for Linux. It is written in Python and released under the GNU General Public License 2. It has not been perfected enough to compete with Google Drive clients on Windows, for example, but it gets the job done.
It features an automatic regular sync every 10 minutes which although cannot be turned off, can be paused. As a GUI app, it shows you how much storage you have left on your Google Drive and the type of files occupying the space.
So there you have it guys. The top 5 Google Drive clients for Linux. Are there any apps you think should have made it to the list instead? Add your suggestions to the comments section below.
Insync in my opinion is the best 😀 is a app multiplatform and pay onetime for a professional service 😀 (for Google driver users )
Nice article, thanks. Not being able to sync my Google Photos has kept me from switching fully over to linux for the last 10 years (I am now switched as of a few weeks ago)
Having read this article, I tried grive2 and cloudcross but both of these did not handle duplicates (only copied one of the duplicates down). There are lots of duplicates in my 21 year photo collection since early cameras usually reset their photo-count frequently!
I have therefore rolled my own see https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync.
This handles duplicates but also extracts album info from the nearly defunct picasaweb api and creates a folder hierarchy representing your Google Photos albums.
It currently only does photos and videos and is currently download only. However I intend to extend it to cover all features of the Windows Google Drive Backup and Sync.
I’d be interested in your opinion if you are still looking into google syncing.
Really? Where have you been looking? I’ve been syncing my Drive and Photos for at least 6-7 years.
meh, returns an error message when trying to auth
These all cannot really compete with Insync (https://www.insynchq.com/). Try it.
An excellent suggestion Tom. Thanks!
I’ll try it out and see.
OK, just tried this and it beats Google’s own sync. Not free, but a reasonable one off license fee.
I shall be dropping further development of my gphotos-sync :-).
Bon voyage 🙂
<3 Thanks so much for the love. We just released 1.4 earlier this year with a huge improvement to our UI + Teams license (for Team Drives syncing) :)
Re Insync, some people may find this useful.
This is a corner case and I’m really happy with Insync otherwise.
It caused me some issues with photos.
It is absolutely great most of the time but … If you re-install your machine, in theory you can install Insync on your new distro and then point it at your previous sync folder (rather than re-download everything from Google Drive) .
This works for the most part, but it ate all of my photos that had duplicate names (that old chestnut). It normally handles duplicate names in a folder by adding ‘(n)’ to duplicates but if you do the re-install thing it ends up deleting all but one of the files. I lost about 1500 of my 90000 images.
Unfortunately that deleted the copies in my Google Photos library due to Google Drive integration. I was able to restore the photos from offline backup to drive but only realized months later that they were gone from Photos. There is no easy way to work out which are missing and restore them (but I’m currently adding a feature to gphotos-sync to provide this).
Have send message but is not visible for what ?
have other project in dev is ODrive : https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive
You could also include
https://hub.docker.com/r/ashael/grive/
A Dockerized Google Drive client
A Docker implementation for the Google Drive Client in https://github.com/vitalif/grive2
For a first time Drive sync
$ docker pull docker pull ashael/grive
$mkdir /home/MyGoogleDriveFoldeName
$cd /home/MyGoogleDriveFoldeName
$ docker run -it -v $PWD:/home/grive -w /home/grive grive
Then inside the Container
$ grive -a
Sync
After this, for Sync only
$ docker run –rm -v $PWD:/home/grive -w /home/grive –name “Gdrive” -u $(id -u):$(id -g) ashael/grive grive
Nice one.
I will give the app a test-drive. Thanks