I recently set up Google Drive on my Mac computer and I’m having a weird issue. The app seems to work fine and I can access my Google Drive through Finder without any problems. All my individual files are visible and I can open them normally.
The problem is that none of my folders are appearing in Finder. I have a lot of documents organized in different folders on my Google Drive, but when I browse through Finder, I only see loose files. The folders are completely missing.
I double checked by logging into Google Drive through my web browser and all the folders are definitely there with all my files inside them. Has anyone experienced this issue before? Is there a setting I need to change to make folders sync properly?
Had this exact same issue about six months ago - it’s a permissions problem. Google Drive needs special access on Mac to show folders properly in Finder. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy and check if Google Drive has full disk access. If it’s not there, add it and enable the permission. Also check the Privacy tab for Files and Folders permissions while you’re at it. Once that’s done, force quit Google Drive through Activity Monitor and restart it. The folders should show up within a few minutes. This completely fixed my issue where I could see files but the folder structure was totally missing.
hey, i had that issue too! sometimes just restarting helps or try signing out of drive and then back in. hope it works for ya!
Sounds like a Google Drive sync issue. Had the same problem when I switched from Dropbox - files would show up but folders wouldn’t sync properly. Check your Drive preferences for sync settings. Look if you’ve got selective sync on or if folders are set to ‘streaming’ instead of ‘available offline’. The desktop client sometimes syncs files first and folder structure later. Also check if your initial sync actually finished - the menu bar status should show it’s done. If it’s stuck, try pausing and resuming sync in Drive preferences. That usually fixes the folder visibility problems.