I’m working on a project where I need to access my Google Drive videos and display them on a webpage. Here’s what I’m trying to accomplish:
- Get a list of all my video files stored in Google Drive.
- Show these videos in a web interface.
- Extract the direct URL for each video file.
- Use HTML5 video player to stream the content.
I’ve been reading about Google Drive API limitations and I’m confused about whether this is actually possible. Some sources suggest that accessing user files programmatically might be restricted.
Can someone confirm if it’s feasible to retrieve and stream personal Google Drive videos through a web application? I’m particularly interested in getting the direct file URLs that work with HTML5 video elements.
Any guidance or examples would be really helpful. Thanks in advance!
I’ve dealt with this exact problem. The tricky part isn’t getting the video files - it’s handling auth and playback correctly. Google Drive API works fine for listing and accessing your videos (use files.list with mimeType parameters). But those direct URLs need auth tokens that expire, so you can’t just drop them into HTML5 video src attributes. Here’s what worked for me: set up middleware on your backend that authenticates with Google Drive, grabs the video using the file ID, then streams it to your frontend with proper Content-Range headers so seeking works. This also lets you control access and sidestep CORS headaches. Don’t bother with webContentLink - it just forces downloads instead of streaming. For performance, you’ll probably want chunked downloads or some caching depending on your file sizes.
yeah, this is def doable but dont expect direct streaming urls from google drive. i tried this before - ended up using the exportLinks field for certain formats or just pulling files through the api and caching them locally. the webViewLink wont work for html5 players btw (learned that the hard way lol). your best bet is prob downloading chunks through the api then serving those yourself.
I built something like this for a media app last year. Google Drive API v3 works for fetching videos, but there’s some tricky stuff to watch out for. You can grab video files with files.list and filter by MIME type - that part’s straightforward. Getting streaming URLs though? That’s where it gets messy. The webContentLink gives you a download URL, but it won’t work for HTML5 streaming since it redirects and needs auth headers. Here’s what actually worked: I used the Drive API to download videos server-side, then served them through my own app with proper streaming headers. This way you handle auth correctly and control the whole streaming experience. You could also grab file metadata from the API and build a proxy endpoint that streams with range headers for video playback. API quotas are pretty generous for personal stuff, but heads up - the auth flow gets complicated when you’re dealing with files across multiple user accounts.