
Google Drive Desktop – A cross-platform Google Drive desktop app made w Electron - mrchaniku
https://github.com/alexkim205/Google-Drive-Desktop
======
CMay
This not being an official release from Google, using this is potentially
worse than giving someone your Google password without fully vetting it. There
are some existing safeguards in place to make a password alone difficult to
use, but the app itself would have signed in access to your account and the
contents of files. You may think it's simple to watch the app for bad behavior
and decide it's safe, but you wouldn't be thinking deviously enough.

Nothing against the developer as they may be trustworthy and honest, but don't
make the mistake of assuming that someone bold enough to put out something
that requires that much trust must by extension be worth trusting. People too
often do.

~~~
anderspitman
Does it ask for your password? I'd expect it to use OAuth.

~~~
CMay
It wouldn't matter how you signed in for potential abuse to occur if the app
itself is untrusted, unfortunately.

The repository doesn't include all of the code that gets included in the app,
because it has dependencies. It links those dependencies on the github page,
but you have to verify that the dependencies being linked to are the ones the
build actually uses. Then check that you like what's in those dependencies. At
first glance, a forked version of one of the dependencies is pulled from his
own repository instead of the repository linked on the page, so you have to
make sure you aren't vetting the wrong repository. Then the release archives
package in Electron for you, so that's another thing you're trusting if you
don't build it locally.

It doesn't mean anyone is doing anything wrong, but even if they have good
intentions good people pull in bad dependencies occasionally too.

Developers as people are innocent until proven guilty. Software is guilty
until proven innocent, especially if there's a higher chance of a security
risk. Not everyone can assess that well for themselves.

~~~
smt88
> _It wouldn 't matter how you signed in for potential abuse to occur if the
> app itself is untrusted, unfortunately.

> _The repository doesn't include all of the code that gets included in the
> app, because it has dependencies.*

> _Software is guilty until proven innocent_

I'm not saying you're wrong about any of this, and I don't trust this app
myself (mostly because JS dependencies are hard to trust for various reasons),
but...

I also can't think of any usable app that meets your criteria for
trustworthiness, including some made by Google itself.

At this point, building much of anything requires standing on a teetering
tower of dependencies that users can't and won't audit.

The question becomes where one draws the line. I think drawing the line at
"anything that touches my Drive files" is reasonable, but we (meaning computer
users) spent decades downloading sketchy executables for our Windows PCs.
Although many things are browser-based now, many of us still do download
native executable freeware from the web.

If you think I'm not offering a better perspective, it's because I'm not.
You're right, but total security also currently means using very little of the
software that's available to us.

~~~
scarface74
These days, I’m very careful what gets downloaded on my computer for just that
reason. Dropbox for the Mac is a security nightmare and Zoom was doing shady
crap before like installing a web server to redownload itself if you
uninstalled it.

On the other hand, I download all sorts of random crap on my iPad because the
security model won’t let apps do anything to shady without you giving it
permission.

------
crazygringo
It's a cool concept in theory -- I'd always thought I'd like using it.

But in practice, I realize I'm addicted to tabs. When working on 3 documents
at once, I want them in separate tabs in the same window -- not 3 different
windows.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'm actually at the point where I want things
to go in the _opposite_ direction -- just turn all my _apps_ into tabs. (Like
Chromebooks, I guess.)

Finder? VLC? Word? Preview? Spotify? Photoshop? My code editor? I just want
them (or each document in them) as tabs next to other webpages and/or each
other. (For Photoshop and code, I'll probably organize my own window/space for
them, but still open up webpages next to my images/code.)

Having tabs _and_ a dock feels redundant in 2020, like two competing paradigms
that just need to be refactored into one by now.

~~~
ta17711771
You need a window manager/virtual desktops, not the insecurity doing
everything in the browser brings.

~~~
crazygringo
Well, to be more specific -- I want the OS itself to be a full-screen tab
container with multiple spaces/desktops (and add tiling, and popping out tabs
like floating windows, as advanced usage).

And then each tab is an app or app document window. So I could have a Chrome
tab next to a Firefox tab if I wanted. Browser tabs would be peers next to
other apps.

None of this is about security, or running apps in the browser. Just using
tabs as the main concept for everything, rather than windows.

~~~
gibspaulding
This bugs me too sometimes. It's incongruous that I can stack Gmail, docs, and
my company's ticket system nearly into one tabulated window, but I have to use
a completely different interface to access a local file browser, RDP, or the
sniping tool.

It's funny, my version would probably just put every browser tab into a
different window and just use a powerful window manager like i3 to deal with
everything.

~~~
ta17711771
You're seeking for Dolphin or similar in a container, Guacamole for remote
desktop.

These should at least get you pointed right.

------
meesles
As a fan of the Google Play desktop app, these Electron wrappers around Google
apps are really flaky and hard to maintain. Google is motivated to break these
implementations since they live outside of their direct web ecosystem, and
when they break it always takes some time to recover since it's open-source.
So you end up still using the browser solution.

What's additionally weird is that you can pull your tabs apart into separate
windows to replicate this exact behavior. It's hard to justify why I need an
exclusive browser just for one app. For Play it's justified because of tighter
integrations with the OS playback keys that the browsers historically have
been flaky with, especially when you're using other apps.

~~~
lonelappde
Things breaking is the natural order of the world. No one needs an incentive
to break anything, merely a lack of incentive to fix will suffice

------
philsnow
Yet another way that Google's branding creates confusion. I read "Google drive
desktop app" and my mind jumped to storage / files, not word processor.

In my mind, "Google drive" is storage, "Google docs" is word processing /
spreadsheets etc. I have no idea why they brought docs into drive.

~~~
fireattack
Isn't it just the author of this app (it doesn't look affiliated to Google to
me)? Probably should call it Google Docs Desktop instead.

I don't find Google's official use of Drive and Docs confusing (there are some
overlaps, but in a natural way).

~~~
gundmc
Yep, this isn't affiliated with Google. Wouldn't be surprised if the author
got a nice email from Google's lawyers if this gains enough eyes.

------
billyhoffman
... An 18 MB animated GIF embedded in the project home page just to show me a
demo video?

I suppose that’s on-brand for an Electron app.

Snark aside, FFmpeg is your friend and a 1-liner plus a <video> tag will
reduce this to less than a MB. Your mobile visitors will thank you!

~~~
saagarjha
GitHub doesn't do <video>.

~~~
Namidairo
While I believe GitHub won't stop you putting animated WebP images in, it
seems Safari is the only major browser without support?

------
ripvanwinkle
This is handy.

Another alternative on Windows is to create a separate chrome profile and then
create a desktop shortcut to that profile. Set the default page to be your
drive in that profile

Here's an example shortcut "C:\Program
Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" \--profile-directory="Profile 2"

Use that profile as your Drive app

~~~
bzb3
When you create a new profile you're asked to put a shortcut in your desktop,
you don't need to create it by hand.

~~~
lonelappde
Hmm, my machine doesn't.

------
some1else
I think you're going to need a unique name for the app. Google and Google
Drive are protected trademarks, so they wont let you use those. You're allowed
to list the compatibility, but you have to make it crystal clear that this is
an unofficial client.

~~~
tempodox
I can only second this. From the title I inferred it's about a Google product.
Is that a bug or a feature?

------
hs86
What is the deal with Google's syncing apps?

"Backup and Sync" still misses features like Files On-Demand/Smart Sync
available in OneDrive/Dropbox and deleting files online pollutes the local
trash/recycle bin on macOS/Window computers.

"Drive File Stream" actually has these lazily loaded file placeholders, but it
is treated like an additionally mounted volume instead of a local folder
somewhere on my local disks. It also managed to occupy over 60 GiB RAM for
over a week during its initial sync which had lots of small files created by
Arq Backup.

It seems like 'unlimited' cloud storage is foremostly limited by the
performance characteristics of their sync clients.

~~~
duxup
I made the mistake of copying a node project I was working on.... holy cow
does Backup and Sync choke on all those tiny JavaScript files.

It started syncing and just couldn't stop.

I had to delete or move all the Backup and Sync contents across my devices to
get to 0 before it quit endlessly thrashing.

~~~
manigandham
Dropbox still has the best sync tech and is the only one that can handle deep
and numerous file hierarchies. The rest have better pricing and integrations
like email/productivity apps.

~~~
brnt
Actually, Resilio is not any slower than Dropbox. Syncthing is also faster
thans any commercial offering I ever tried. Even Nextcloud sync is fast after
an initial init.

~~~
manigandham
What exactly are you referring to? Upload speed? That's not the issue.

Dropbox is the best at crawling a very complex directory structure with
millions of files and diffing it efficiently with the server and other
clients, and then transferring all the individual changes. Nothing else comes
close. And their write-ups show the work involved:

[https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-
of-o...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-
engine)

[https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-testing-our-new-sync-
en...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-testing-our-new-sync-engine)

~~~
brnt
Indexing. Dropbox is slower than Resilio in my experience, and for shares with
100k-1M files, many small.

But also throughput is good.

------
ddlutz
I guess I just don't get how this is different / better than making a desktop
chrome shortcut that opens into a new window? It gives the appearance of
running as an independent app.

------
pier25
Respectfully... what is the point of this?

Performance will be similar to using Google Docs on Chrome. Memory usage will
be probably worse since you are running another engine besides your browser.

Is it just for the convenience of not having to type the URL on your browser?

~~~
simonklitj
I'm guessing it's for people that want the Google products to be their main
desktop office suite. Haven't looked into it, but maybe it can open .docx
files etc. directly as the default app for it?

~~~
jhoechtl
It still remains a shim over the stock Google Apps then, right?

~~~
simonklitj
Sure, yes.

------
chpmrc
What's the difference between using this and clicking on the new "Install"
button in the URL bar? I have all of my Google apps available as system apps
either using that button or using "More tools -> Create shortcut", which is
probably one of the best hidden gems of Chrome (yes, even Gmail can run as a
separate app and supports offline mode).

------
lvs
Does this support the offline extensions, so that you can work seamlessly
(mostly) if you're temporarily disconnected or without service?

(e.g. on a plane, if I ever take one again...)

------
rvz
> Want a Microsoft Word-esque experience for your Google Drive? Or simply
> looking to separate Google Drive from the other bajillion tabs that you
> opened for your research paper? Look no further!

Well first of all, I'd pretty much rather have a shortcut that can be opened
in any browser I'd want to use, than to download another copy of Chrome
dedicated to running the Google Drive web app as its own 'app' using Electron.

Secondly, Chrome supports grouped tabs which allows you to organise your tabs
anyway which sounds great over having 3 - 4 separate Electron apps trying to
behave like MS Office (Just don't).

And last but not least, Unlike MS Office, this requires a persistent internet
connection to function. So if your internet is down, your wonderful Google
Drive electron app will look like this: [0]

[0]
[https://twitter.com/rhysforyou/status/1260361296551178240](https://twitter.com/rhysforyou/status/1260361296551178240)

------
titzer
Is it just me or does a 217mb download for a word processor with "save to
network drive" seem like an awful lot?

------
znpy
I used to use Fluid ([https://fluidapp.com/](https://fluidapp.com/)) when I
had a company-issued macbook.

There was something similar for gnu+linux too (nativefier was the name iirc)
that worked for a while but then stopped working.

It was very handy.

I kind miss those things because having certain websites in their own apps
within their own browser was comfortable.

EDIT: I've tried
[https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier](https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier)
and it seems to be working again. Basically you can invoke it and pass it the
url of any webapp and it will package an electron-based browser that loads
your webapp on startup.

------
alphachloride
So this is like Chrome but you can only open drive.google.com

ok

------
Icyphox
I mean, I can't see this lasting longer than a year until Google decides to
break something on their end. And for the love of God, stop using Electron.

------
rd07
Still waiting for Google Drive official linux client...

~~~
SanchoPanda
Here you go:
[https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier](https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier)

If you have a setup you like, save it a shell script. You'll have to rerun as
google breaks it every six months or so.

~~~
rd07
Nativier wraps a website with Electron, and in the end it's not a native apps.
What I mean is a Google Drive client like Dropbox client in linux where I can
sync a directory in my computer, to a directory in my Google Drive. There are
some unofficial Google Drive client in Linux like Grive2
([https://github.com/vitalif/grive2](https://github.com/vitalif/grive2)), but
like any unofficial apps, they are prone to break when Google update their
API.

~~~
SanchoPanda
I was attempting to be snarky in my original comment, it was in poor taste and
not too funny, apologies.

If you have not yet looked at rclone, it's worth exploring, they do a great
job.

------
kbumsik
Its title made me think it's an official app by Google. Does'nt "Google Drive
Desktop" infringe the trademark?

------
c-c-c-c-c
I dont think you need to worry so much about the name, look at Google Play
Music Desktop Player. [https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-
Desktop...](https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop-
Player-UNOFFICIAL-)

------
Emendo
When I saw this title, I thought they brought Google Desktop, a utility that
searches local files back from the dead.

~~~
jhoechtl
Yeah that was an incredibly powerful tool, I used it every day back in the
days.

------
ghego1
This is a cool project, and the code does really stand out in terms of
quality.

I wanted to do something like this for years, but never got the time to make
it, so I'm glad to see someone did it.

However now I think this is not really relevant, thanks to PWA there's a
better way to make Google docs apps feel native.

------
ggm
It would be nice if it didn't do the 'unsigned app' dance on a Mac.

~~~
encom
That's a Mac problem.

~~~
ggm
Thats a Mac and s/w developer account/licencing problem.

------
fritex
Better make one for Linux :)

------
sys_64738
Am I the only one who refuses to run Electron apps?

~~~
saagarjha
Nope.

------
monadic2
Heh, on the day of a monopoly suit.

