


Think of Google Drive as a latter-day hard drive. So how to take advantage of all that space? Our guide covers all the basics, from how to use Google Drive to upload and access files on any device, to all the tools that make collaboration with others a breeze. If you have a Google account, you already have 15 GB of free storage on Google Drive. But when compared to competitors like DropBox and Apple's iCloud service, Google Drive's popularity is built on useful collaborative tools and built-in integrations with Google's suite of products and services. The same dialog is seen when clicking the gear in either the Activity or Account view.Using a cloud storage service like Google Drive has plenty of advantages, such as easier file sharing and having a remote location to backup your files.

How do I make Drive for Desktop confine itself to only mirroring, the way I have it set up in Windows?ĮDIT: Here's what I see in Finder and on my desktop Finder showing two Google Drive foldersĪfter clicking on the Google Drive taskbar icon One is my old Google Drive folder and a new one, containing the same files, but all having "cloud" badges indicating they're being streamed. In Finder I now see TWO "Google Drive" folders. The Preferences dialog for Google Drive on the Mac looks completely different from the one on Windows and lists no options to control anything except Launch on Startup and some cache directory settings. It wants to sync my entire hard disk to Google so it can stream the files, which I do not want to do.

I was just forced to install the new Drive on a MacBook in place of Backup and Sync, and there does not seem to be any such option. When you install the "new" Google Drive for Desktop on Windows you get an option in the preferences dialog to turn off streaming and just continue to use mirroring - you can specify which folders to sync. This question is about the new Google Drive for Desktop on a MacBook Pro with Catalina 10.15.7.
