Google Drive not syncing on a Mac: what to check, in order

"Google Drive is not syncing" covers, on a Mac, at least five different faults, and the advice that circulates for it is mostly a list of restarts in random order. Some of those steps fix nothing. One of them can lose data if it is taken too early.

The useful order runs from cheapest and most conclusive to most destructive. It also starts by separating faults that look identical in Finder: a file that never uploaded, a file that is in the cloud but was never downloaded, and a folder that is empty because the app is not running at all.

First, decide which of three things is actually broken

Before touching anything, the symptom needs classifying.

Local edits are not reaching the cloud. Something was changed on the Mac and the web version still shows the old content. This is the genuine sync failure, and it is usually about permissions, storage or file ownership rather than about the app.

Cloud files are not reaching the Mac. The folder is visible but files do not open, or open empty. This is a streaming problem, not a sync problem, and on recent macOS releases it is usually an approval that was never granted.

The folder is gone or empty. With streaming, Google documents that files can only be accessed while Drive for desktop is running. An app that quit silently at login looks exactly like a sync failure from inside Finder.

Getting this wrong wastes the most time. Reinstalling the app does nothing for a file whose owner has run out of Google storage.

Check that this Mac is supported, because the answer changed

Google's compatibility documentation states a single, blunt requirement for Mac: macOS Ventura 13.0 or higher. Older releases are outside support, and there is no desktop build for Linux at all.

Two further constraints are documented and are more often the culprit than the version number.

The content cache is only supported on Apple File System (APFS) and Hierarchical File System plus (HFS+). Network volumes are explicitly not supported, and the documentation names Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS). Pointing Drive for desktop at a mounted share, a network home directory, or a NAS is not a configuration that is expected to work.

The streamed volume itself has a quirk worth knowing. Google documents that Drive for desktop creates a virtual Drive which opens as a File Allocation Table (FAT) file system, and that FAT carries a file size limit, with the largest possible file on a FAT32 drive being 4 GB. Large video files that refuse to move are a size ceiling, not a sync bug.

Work out whether this Mac uses File Provider

This is the single highest-value check on a modern Mac, because the two streaming mechanisms behave differently enough that advice written for one is wrong for the other.

Google documents that on macOS 12.1 and up, streaming uses the system's File Provider technology. Confirming it takes four clicks: open Drive for desktop, open Preferences, click the settings control at the top right, and look under "Google Drive streaming location". A notice reading that the folder location is controlled by macOS means File Provider is in use. No notice means the legacy method is.

The differences Google publishes between the two are substantial.

Behaviour	File Provider	Legacy streaming
Where files live	Under ~/Library/CloudStorage, and the location cannot be changed	Under /Volumes/GoogleDrive by default, and the location can be changed
Sidebar section	Locations	Favorites
Dragging out of the folder	Moves the item, and the cloud copy is trashed	Copies the item, and the cloud copy stays
Spotlight	Searches a subset, including downloaded files	Searches only if explicitly enabled
While syncing is paused	Downloads are not possible	Downloads still work
With the app not running	Downloaded and locally created files remain reachable	Downloaded and locally created files are not reachable
Quick Look	Works for downloaded files only	Works for all files, given a connection

The third row deserves emphasis on its own. Under File Provider, dragging a file out of the Drive folder moves it and trashes the cloud copy, because both locations are treated as the same volume. Google's own note on this is that holding the Option key while dragging produces a copy instead. A good share of the reports that Drive deleted somebody's files are this behaviour working as documented.

There is also an approval step that has no equivalent in the legacy method. Google documents that File Provider requires explicit approval before streaming works: open Finder, click Google Drive under Locations, and click Enable at the top right, or accept the prompt when it appears. Without that approval, streaming does not happen. The folder is present and the files are not.

Grant the permissions macOS is holding back

Drive for desktop needs the system's permission to touch several locations, and the documented list is specific: the Desktop, Documents and Downloads folders, removable and network volumes, and the Photos library. Permission is also required for real-time presence and for signing in with a Bluetooth key.

If approval was declined at first run and a folder was added later, the settings have to be changed by hand. The route is System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Files and Folders or Photos, and toggling the relevant permission. Google adds that the change may not take effect until Drive for desktop or the Mac is restarted.

A related check applies to individual files. Where a specific file refuses to sync while everything around it succeeds, the file's own permissions are worth reading: Control-click the file, choose Get Info, and read the Sharing and Permissions section. Read and write access is required for sync.

Then work through the restarts, in this order

Google's own basic troubleshooting list is ordered, and the order matters because the later steps are riskier than the earlier ones.

1. Confirm the Mac meets the system requirements.
2. Check the internet connection, keeping in mind that firewall, proxy and other network settings can interfere.
3. Restart Drive for desktop. On a Mac this is the menu bar icon, then Settings, then Quit, then reopening the app.
4. Restart the Mac.
5. Disconnect and reconnect the account.
6. Reinstall Drive for desktop.

Step five is the one to be careful with. Google's documentation attaches a warning to it: files that previously failed to sync may have been moved to a Lost and Found folder, and that folder is deleted when the account is disconnected. Copying anything in Lost and Found somewhere safe is a prerequisite, not an optional precaution.

One more item belongs on this list as a cause rather than a cure. Google names system cleaner apps, including CCleaner and Advanced SystemCare, as able to edit Drive for desktop's configuration data, producing assorted errors and potentially data loss. A Mac with a cleaner installed has a candidate cause before any of the above.

Errors that are not sync failures at all

Several messages that read as sync failures describe something else entirely, and none of them are fixed by restarting.

Local disk full. Google is explicit that the space tracker in Drive for desktop shows the room left on the Mac's hard drive, not the Google account storage. Streaming a file uses almost no local space; mirroring downloads a full copy. Shared files can fill the hard drive if they are synced, while never counting against Google storage.

Google storage full. The mirror image, and it has a version that surprises people: the same error appears when syncing changes to a file owned by somebody else whose storage is full. Fixing it means asking the owner to free space or transfer ownership.

No permission to sync. Edit access on the item is missing. For files in a shared drive, the shared drive's manager grants it.

Bandwidth or download limits. Some files can only be downloaded a limited number of times per day, and accounts have a daily upload limit. Google's documented behaviour is that Drive for desktop retries later, and the advice if it does not is to wait a day and restart the app.

Google Docs files that cannot upload. Because the contents of a Google Docs file are not stored on the Mac, editing the local stub with a third-party editor corrupts it. The fix is to copy the original in the browser and delete the invalid local file.

Photos that are too large or too small. Backup to Google Photos rejects photos larger than 200 MB or 150 MP, videos larger than 10 GB, and files smaller than 256 by 256 pixels. Thumbnails generated by other apps routinely trip the lower bound.

Reading these as a group is the point. A folder full of items that will not sync, each for a different documented reason, is a normal state rather than a broken installation, and the per-item error is the only thing that distinguishes them. Tools that keep a shell next to the file listing make that kind of triage faster, which is one of the reasons a file manager with a built-in terminal earns its place on a Mac that holds several cloud folders.

Consider whether streaming is the wrong mode for this work

Some failures are the mode, not the app. Google's guidance separates the two clearly: streaming keeps files in the cloud and uses local space only for what is being worked on, while mirroring keeps a full copy on the Mac at all times.

The constraints are fixed. My Drive can be streamed or mirrored. Shared drives can only be streamed. Local folders and the desktop can only be mirrored. And the documented performance note is the one that matters for creative work: applications that do extensive writing, video editing or high-resolution photo editing are faster when files are mirrored, and some applications use combinations of APIs that make files difficult to stream at all.

Switching is done in Preferences, under Folders from Drive, in the My Drive syncing options. Google notes that the file location changes when switching, and that the folder holding the previously mirrored files stops syncing, so the move is worth making once rather than repeatedly.

The order of operations on that switch is worth respecting. Local files should be confirmed as fully synced to the cloud before the mode changes, because the old mirrored folder stops being maintained the moment streaming takes over. Anything that had not finished uploading stays behind in a folder nothing is watching any more, and it will not announce itself. A directory listing of the old location, compared against the web view, is the only check that catches it.

What to change first

Confirm the macOS version is Ventura 13.0 or later, then open Finder and check whether Google Drive under Locations still shows an Enable control. Those two checks resolve most of what gets reported as a sync failure on a current Mac, and neither risks anything.

If the real problem is that several cloud folders now have to be reconciled by hand every week, the answer is a better view of them rather than a better sync app. The comparison of file managers sets out what Atriens changes about that, and what it does not.