6 Best Free and Open Source Google Drive Clients

Google Drive, formerly Google Docs, is a file storage and synchronization service created by Google. They are a multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.

Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud, share files, and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with collaborators. Google Drive includes Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, an office suite that permits collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Google Drive lets you open and edit files from any device. Users get 15GB of free storage. This includes Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail. More storage can be purchased. Drive uses Google’s highly-secure, custom-built data centres.

Google Drive is a very popular cloud storage service. Files can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Keeping your files in Google Drive means that you can access them from just about anywhere — on all your devices. Drive therefore eliminates the need to email or save a file to a USB drive. And because Drive allows users to share files, working with others becomes much easier.

The service was launched in 2012 offering desktop clients for Windows and Mac OS. Official support for Linux was not tended. And this is still the case today even though one of the clients below was originally developed by a Google employee.

Fortunately, a number of budding open source developers have coded Google Drive clients for Linux. This article identifies our favourites.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 6 high quality open source Google Drive clients. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wishes to use the Drive service.

Click the links in the table below to learn more about each client.

Spacedrive plans to add cloud integration.

This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.

Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. Spotted a useful open source Linux program not covered on our site? Please let us know by completing this form. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.