rclone/docs/content/drive.md

title	description	date
Google drive	Rclone docs for Google drive	2015-09-12

Google Drive

Paths are specified as drive:path

Drive paths may be as deep as required, eg drive:directory/subdirectory.

The initial setup for drive involves getting a token from Google drive which you need to do in your browser. rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> n
name> remote
What type of source is it?
Choose a number from below
 1) swift
 2) s3
 3) local
 4) drive
type> 4
Google Application Client Id - leave blank normally.
client_id> 
Google Application Client Secret - leave blank normally.
client_secret> 
Remote config
Use auto config?
 * Say Y if not sure
 * Say N if you are working on a remote or headless machine or Y didn't work
y) Yes
n) No
y/n> y
If your browser doesn't open automatically go to the following link: http://127.0.0.1:53682/auth
Log in and authorize rclone for access
Waiting for code...
Got code
--------------------
[remote]
client_id = 
client_secret = 
token = {"AccessToken":"xxxx.x.xxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","RefreshToken":"1/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx","Expiry":"2014-03-16T13:57:58.955387075Z","Extra":null}
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

Note that rclone runs a webserver on your local machine to collect the token as returned from Google if you use auto config mode. This only runs from the moment it opens your browser to the moment you get back the verification code. This is on http://127.0.0.1:53682/ and this it may require you to unblock it temporarily if you are running a host firewall, or use manual mode.

You can then use it like this,

List directories in top level of your drive

rclone lsd remote:

List all the files in your drive

rclone ls remote:

To copy a local directory to a drive directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source remote:backup

Modified time

Google drive stores modification times accurate to 1 ms.

Revisions

Google drive stores revisions of files. When you upload a change to an existing file to google drive using rclone it will create a new revision of that file.

Revisions follow the standard google policy which at time of writing was

• They are deleted after 30 days or 100 revisions (whatever comes first).
• They do not count towards a user storage quota.

Deleting files

By default rclone will delete files permanently when requested. If sending them to the trash is required instead then use the --drive-use-trash flag.

Specific options

Here are the command line options specific to this cloud storage system.

--drive-chunk-size=SIZE

Upload chunk size. Must a power of 2 >= 256k. Default value is 256kB.

--drive-full-list

Use a full listing for directory list. More data but usually quicker. On by default, disable with --full-drive-list=false.

--drive-upload-cutoff=SIZE

File size cutoff for switching to chunked upload. Default is 256kB.

--drive-use-trash

Send files to the trash instead of deleting permanently. Defaults to off, namely deleting files permanently.

--drive-auth-owner-only

Only consider files owned by the authenticated user. Requires that --drive-full-list=true (default).

--drive-formats

Google documents can only be exported from Google drive. When rclone downloads a Google doc it chooses a format to download depending upon this setting.

By default the formats are docx,xlsx,pptx,svg which are a sensible default for an editable document.

When choosing a format, rclone runs down the list provided in order and chooses the first file format the doc can be exported as from the list. If the file can't be exported to a format on the formats list, then rclone will choose a format from the default list.

If you prefer an archive copy then you might use --drive-formats pdf, or if you prefer openoffice/libreoffice formats you might use --drive-formats ods,odt.

Note that rclone adds the extension to the google doc, so if it is calles My Spreadsheet on google docs, it will be exported as My Spreadsheet.xlsx or My Spreadsheet.pdf etc.

Here are the possible extensions with their corresponding mime types.

Extension	Mime Type	Description
csv	text/csv	Standard CSV format for Spreadsheets
doc	application/msword	Micosoft Office Document
docx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document	Microsoft Office Document
html	text/html	An HTML Document
jpg	image/jpeg	A JPEG Image File
ods	application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet	Openoffice Spreadsheet
ods	application/x-vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet	Openoffice Spreadsheet
odt	application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text	Openoffice Document
pdf	application/pdf	Adobe PDF Format
png	image/png	PNG Image Format
pptx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation	Microsoft Office Powerpoint
rtf	application/rtf	Rich Text Format
svg	image/svg+xml	Scalable Vector Graphics Format
txt	text/plain	Plain Text
xls	application/vnd.ms-excel	Microsoft Office Spreadsheet
xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	Microsoft Office Spreadsheet
zip	application/zip	A ZIP file of HTML, Images CSS

Limitations

Drive has quite a lot of rate limiting. This causes rclone to be limited to transferring about 2 files per second only. Individual files may be transferred much faster at 100s of MBytes/s but lots of small files can take a long time.