With Google not providing an official one, there’s no shortage of unofficial Google Drive clients for Linux.
Some, like InSync 3, are paid software, others, like ODrive, are open source and free to use.
But all of them more or less do the same thing: sync files to and from your Google Drive on your Linux machine, with as little fuss as possible.
Reader Jena mailed in to tell me about a (somewhat) new Google Drive client for Linux desktop built in Vala.
It’s called VGrive and although it is “designed for elementary OS” — i.e. you should only expect it work well on that distro, it may look terrible outside of it — the app author does provide an installer for Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other distros.
Small mercies!
VGrive (though referred to as ‘egrive’ within the UI) is pitched as a Google Drive client (both back-end and front-end) that offers a “clean and minimalist GUI”. It is said to automatically detect changes in local and remote files so that it only syncs files when required.
As any good cloud storage app should, VGrive also lets you pick the exact local folder to sync your cloud files to. This is handy if you want to sync your files to a removable device or another exotic location on you system.
However, there are a few drawbacks versus other comparable methods.
Firstly, VGrive does not “integrate” with the Nautilus file manager used on Ubuntu, nor Nemo (Linux Mint), Caja (Ubuntu MATE) and others.
Secondly, as mentioned, the app is “designed” for elementary OS. That’s swell if you’re an elementary OS user, less swell if you’re on a more widely used Linux desktop or distro like Ubuntu.
There isn’t, as I understand it, a “system tray” applet for this tool. This means the app doesn’t sync if you close the main window.
Interested in trying it out?
VGrive is free open source software whose source code is hosted on Github.
Elementary OS users can install Vgrive on elementary OS from the “App Center”.
Users on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros (like Linux Mint) aren’t ‘officially supported’, but may use the bundle provided on Github to install the app on these systems:
Do note that the offline installer method will NOT provide you with on-going updates. Further, as of writing, there’s no. This means that you will need to install new release/update manually, as they’re released.