Google Drive for desktop on a Mac: which files are really local

Google Drive for desktop puts a Google account into the Finder, and from that point the interesting question is no longer whether it works. It is which of those files exist on the disk, and which are names standing in for something that still has to be fetched. Getting that wrong produces the two complaints that dominate support threads: a laptop that fills up unexpectedly, and a file that cannot be opened on a plane. Both come from the same misunderstanding, and the setting that controls it is a single choice in the app's preferences.

What installing the app actually changes

Drive for desktop is a sync client plus a file system extension. The requirements are narrow on the Mac side. Google's system requirements page lists macOS Ventura 13.0 or higher, says the desktop version is not available for Linux at all, and rules out network volumes such as SMB and NFS as places to keep synced content. Up to 4 accounts can be signed in at the same time, each appearing as its own location.

The install does not move any existing files. It adds a location to the Finder and starts a background process that mediates between that location and the cloud. Two permission prompts usually follow, and both are worth answering deliberately rather than dismissing. Google's documentation names the folders involved: Desktop, Documents and Downloads, removable and network volumes, and the Photos library. Permission is granted per category under System Settings, in Privacy and Security, under Files and Folders or Photos.

Skipping a prompt is recoverable. The setting can be toggled later in the same place, though the documentation notes that a restart of the app or the computer may be needed for the change to take effect.

There is one accounting point that causes a lot of confusion before anything else goes wrong. The space indicator inside the app reports free space on the computer's disk, not the Google account's quota. They move independently, and a shared drive can consume a great deal of local disk while counting nothing against the account's storage, because shared files are not owned by that account.

Streaming and mirroring, stated as a decision

This is the setting that decides what is local. Google documents both modes in its reference on streaming and mirroring, and the summary it gives for the streaming mode is direct.

Files are primarily stored in the cloud, but will be made available offline when accessed. Streaming uses very little space on your computer. Source: support.google.com

Mirroring is the opposite trade. A full copy lives on the disk and in the cloud at once, everything is available offline by default, and the local disk pays for it. The Google account's quota is unaffected either way, because the cloud copy exists in both modes.

	Streaming (the default)	Mirroring
Local disk used	Only for files opened, recently used, or explicitly made offline	A full copy of My Drive
Offline access	Only for items selected for it	Everything, by default
With the app not running	Generally not accessible	Accessible as ordinary local files
Unsynced changes	Held in a local cache, which can be cleared or corrupted	Present on the disk as normal files
Heavy video or photo editing	Slower, because data has to arrive first	Faster

The choice is not available for everything. My Drive can be streamed or mirrored. Shared drives, other computers, and backed up USB devices can only be streamed. Folders on the Mac that are being backed up into Drive, the ones listed under folders from the computer, can only be mirrored. So a machine with both a shared drive and a backed up Documents folder is running both modes at once regardless of the My Drive setting, which is worth knowing before blaming one mode for a symptom the other caused.

Switching between modes is the riskiest operation in the app, and the direction matters. Going from mirroring to streaming means the local copy is removed once its contents are in the cloud. Google's guidance is to confirm that recent changes have finished syncing before switching, because unsynced files deleted along with the old local folder are lost.

Telling whether one specific file is on the disk

In streaming mode, the Finder shows every file in the account whether or not its contents are present. A cloud icon next to a file means the data has not been downloaded. No icon means it has. That badge is the fastest check available, and it is also the basis for a behaviour that catches people out: Quick Look previews only work for files without the cloud icon. A folder of images that previews fine one day and shows nothing the next has not broken, it has been evicted from the local cache.

From a shell the check is different, because the path exists either way. The location depends on which streaming mechanism is in use. When files are streamed on macOS 12.1 and later, Drive for desktop uses Apple's File Provider, and Google's page on Drive for desktop on macOS gives the default as ~/Library/CloudStorage, a path that cannot be changed. The legacy streaming method mounted the account under /Volumes/GoogleDrive, and that path could be configured. Which one is active is visible in the app: open Preferences, then Settings, and look under the Google Drive streaming location for a note saying that the folder location is controlled by macOS.

A shell listing reports the logical size of a streamed file even when no data is local, so ls -l does not answer the question. Disk usage does, because a placeholder occupies almost nothing:

cd ~/Library/CloudStorage
ls -l "My Drive/clip.mov"    # the logical size, present either way
du -sh "My Drive/clip.mov"   # the blocks actually on the disk
du -sh */                    # the same question per account

The practical consequence for anyone who works from a prompt is that a directory of streamed files behaves normally for listing and renaming, and unpredictably for reading. A script that opens every file in a folder will trigger a download per file, at network speed, with no progress indication. Running that script from a window where the folder listing and the shell are the same view makes the downloads visible as they happen, and the comparison of file managers that include a terminal covers which tools show that state rather than hiding it.

Making files available offline, and what it costs

In streaming mode, offline access is opt in per item. Right-click a file or folder in the Finder, choose the Drive submenu, and pick offline access. The data is downloaded and kept, and the cloud icon disappears.

Two limits are worth planning around. The first is that offline selections are removed if the account is disconnected, which Google states directly for streaming accounts. Signing out and back in to fix an unrelated problem therefore resets every offline choice on that account.

The second is that the cache backing all of this cannot be relocated to an external disk when File Provider is in use, because macOS decides where those temporary files live. A Mac with a small internal disk and a large external one cannot push the streamed cache onto the external volume. The options are to mirror a subset deliberately, or to keep offline selections narrow.

There is also a state that looks like a bug and is documented behaviour. While syncing is paused, files cannot be downloaded at all. Pausing to protect a slow connection therefore makes every non-local file unopenable until sync resumes.

The behaviour changes File Provider brought

For anyone whose habits date from the legacy streaming method, four of them changed. Google sets the two mechanisms side by side in a table on the same macOS page, so all four are documented differences rather than regressions.

Dragging moves rather than copies. In the File Provider location, dragging an item out of Google Drive moves it, and the cloud copy is trashed. The old mounted-volume behaviour copied and left the cloud version intact. Holding Option while dragging restores copying, and it is the safer default habit for anything irreplaceable.

Spotlight sees less. Spotlight searches only a subset of the files, essentially the downloaded ones. A file that exists in the account but has never been fetched will not appear in a Spotlight result, which is why the app ships its own search and why the Drive website finds things the desktop cannot. The same applies to any tool built on the Spotlight index rather than on directory traversal.

Files persist without the app. Downloaded and locally created files remain accessible when Drive for desktop is not running. Under the older mechanism they did not, because the whole volume disappeared with the process.

Streaming is less granular. Google notes that in many settings files must be fully downloaded before they can be examined, rather than read progressively, which is what makes opening a large video from a streamed folder feel slower than it used to.

Where a file actually is when something goes wrong

Sync problems are easier to diagnose once the three places a change can sit are named. A file being edited on a Mac exists as a local copy, as an entry in a local cache of pending changes, and as a version in the cloud, and a symptom usually points at exactly one of them.

If the file opens and edits fine but a colleague sees an older version, the change is sitting in the pending cache and has not been uploaded. The sync activity list in the app shows what is queued, and pausing sync is the most common reason a queue stops moving. Google's advanced guidance is blunt about the risk here: unsynced changes in streaming mode live in a local cache, and they can be lost if that cache is cleared or corrupted. Clearing the cache to fix a display glitch is therefore not a harmless step.

If the file will not open at all and shows a cloud icon, the data has never arrived. That is a network or a paused-sync problem, not a corruption problem, and the fix is to resume sync and wait rather than to re-download the app.

If the file is missing from the Finder but visible on the Drive website, the local view is stale. Quitting and reopening Drive for desktop rebuilds it. If the reverse is true, and a file is in the Finder but not on the website, the upload has not completed and quitting the app is the wrong move.

One behaviour deserves separate mention because it produces a confusing error. Applications that write files through a combination of temporary files, renames, and file locks, which is common in office suites and in some editors, do not always cooperate with a streamed location. Google keeps a separate troubleshooting section for Microsoft Office and Outlook files in its advanced guide, and the same guide notes that real-time presence in Office needs Accessibility permission on macOS on top of Office 2010 or later. Where a document keeps failing to save from a streamed folder, saving into a mirrored folder and letting the sync happen afterwards sidesteps the whole class of problem, at the cost of the disk space mirroring needs.

Choosing a setup that matches the work

Three patterns cover most Macs, and the deciding factor is disk size relative to account size.

A laptop with a small disk and a large Drive should stream My Drive and make a narrow set of active project folders available offline. Reviewing which folders those are every month or so keeps the cache from quietly becoming a full mirror.

A desktop machine with room to spare, used for editing video or large images, benefits from mirroring My Drive. The speed difference on write-heavy work is the reason Google names those applications specifically, and offline access stops being something to manage.

A machine that mostly consumes shared drives has no decision to make about My Drive that will help, because shared drives stream regardless. The lever there is offline selection, not sync mode.

Whichever pattern applies, the Finder is not the only window involved. Terminal work against a streamed path, checking what is actually local, and moving files between a cloud location and a project directory are all one task split across windows, and a tool built to hold folders and a shell together is aimed at exactly that split. The feature list for that kind of window is the place to check the specifics.

What to change first

Open Preferences and confirm which mode My Drive is using, then decide it deliberately rather than leaving the default in place. If streaming stays, pick the two or three folders that need offline access and set them now, before the next flight or outage. A window that shows the folder, the shell, and the sync state at once makes that state easy to keep an eye on, and Atriens is built that way.