Google Drive

Tip

Download Mountain Duck as an alternative to Drive File Stream or Drive for Desktop.

Connecting

Connect to your Google Drive to store plain files.

Authentication

Attention

Using prior versions to 4.12.0 (Mountain Duck) or 8.4.0 (Cyberduck), you might not be able to connect to Google Drive anymore because of the deprescated OAuth out-of-band flow.

Google Drive uses OAuth 2 to allow Cyberduck to access your files on Google Drive. Choose your account email as the username in the bookmark and choose Allow on the website opened in your default web browser to allow Cyberduck to View and manage the files in your Google Drive. The authorization code will be submitted to Cyberduck automatically. Subsequent connections will not require authorization, unless the refresh token itself is expired due to inactivity.

Advanced Protection Program

Using Advanced Protection Program will cause the OAuth login flow to fail with the error message: 400 admin_policy_enforced.

Google Apps Accounts

To access the Google Docs storage of your company’s Google Apps Account, use your email address connected to your Google Apps account for the username.

Google Account With 2-Step Verification

Refer to Signing in using application-specific passwords on how to set an application-specific password to access Google Drive with 2-step verification enabled for your Google Account.

Multiple Accounts

You can connect to multiple accounts at the same time. Create a new bookmark for every account and run through the OAuth flow. Make sure to log out in your browser prior setting up a new bookmark to make sure the new bookmark is linked to a newly authenticated account.

Reset OAuth Tokens

If you have accidentally logged in with the wrong Google Drive Account or want to change the login of the Google Drive bookmark delete the current bookmark and create a new one to start a new authentication flow.

Alternatively, you can reset the OAuth token by deleting the entries related to duck:googledrive?user=(user) out of the Windows Credential Manager or on macOS the entries related to accounts.google.com out of Keychain.

Custom OAuth Client ID

You can register a custom OAuth 2.0 client ID with Google to operate independently of our registered client ID.

Cyberduck CLI

You can list the root contents of your Google Drive with Cyberduck CLI using

duck --list googledrive:/

Refer to the Cyberduck CLI documentation for more operations. For subsequent invocations make sure to include the --username parameter and set it to the email address registered with Google to allow the lookup of previously saved OAuth tokens.

Features

Search

You can search recursively for files fast without browsing folders first.

Versions

A list of file versions can be viewed in the Versions tab of the Info window. Additionally, versions of the list can be deleted.

Deleting Files and Folders

Deleted files are trashed instead of being permanently deleted. This feature is enabled by default. It can be disabled using a hidden configuration option.

browser.delete.trash=false

Documents

Google Docs Documents

For Google Docs documents (Docs, Sheets, Slides), URL shortcut files are displayed that point your web browser to the document in Google Docs.

• .webloc on macOS

• .url on Windows

Attention

Google Docs files can’t be managed (renamed, moved, or deleted) within Mountain Duck or Cyberduck.

Team Drives

Use the regular Google Drive connection type to see the Team Drives besides My Drive and Shared with me.

Shared with me

Documents shared with you from another Google account can be found inside the top-level folder Shared with me.

Share

Create download shares of files or folders for others with no access to your Google Drive using File → Share….

Issues

Rate Limits

Google Drive is imposing rate limits to requests resulting in 403 Forbidden replies indicating the Rate Limit Exceeded error. Make sure you have set to Repeat failed networking tasks in Preferences → Connection and set a delay.

Top Level folder

It is not possible to create a top level folder in Mountain Duck or Cyberduck. Instead, the following virtual top level folders are displayed which cannot be moved or renamed:

Folder Name	Contents
My Drive	Personal files
Shared Drives	Shared team drives
Shared with me	Shared files and folders

The Granted Scopes do not Give Access to all of the Requested Spaces

Please remove the previously saved OAuth tokens Google Drive (Email) OAuth2 Access Token saved in your keychain and reconnect to grant Cyberduck access to Google Photos.

Abusive Files

Google Drive may require the user is acknowledging the risk of downloading known malware or other abusive files. For such files a prompt Acknowledge the risk of downloading known malware or other abusive file is shown when the file has been flagged by Google as possible malware.