Google Drive
Mounts Drive as a volume and syncs selected folders, rather than downloading everything.
What it does
Google Drive for desktop offers two modes per folder: stream, where files appear in a virtual volume and download on access, and mirror, where they exist locally and sync both ways. It also backs up chosen local folders to Drive, and syncs Google Photos.
Notes
- Streaming uses a virtual filesystem, so the mount point is not an ordinary directory. Build tools,
findand backup software behave oddly inside it — keep repositories and build outputs out. - Mirror mode is what you want for anything a local tool needs to read reliably.
- Time Machine will not back up a streamed Drive; the cloud copy is the backup, which is a different guarantee.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| iCloud Drive | Freemium | Already there, and better integrated with Finder |
| Dropbox | Freemium | The most reliable selective-sync implementation of the group |
| OneDrive | Freemium | The right answer if the rest of the work is Microsoft 365 |
| Syncthing or Nextcloud | Open source | Self-hosted, no third party holding the files |
| rclone | Open source | Scriptable access to all of the above, without a sync daemon |
Install
brew install --cask google-drive