I want to connect my Colab notebook to Google Drive without going through the manual login steps every time. Right now I have to click on the authentication link, sign in to my Google account, and then copy paste the verification code back into the notebook.
Is there a way to make this automatic using the standard Colab tools? I’d rather stick with the default method instead of switching to third party libraries.
Here’s what I’m currently using:
from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/gdrive')
I’m hoping there’s a way to save the authentication so it works automatically for each notebook session.
Nope, there’s no way around the authentication step with standard Colab drive mounting. Google designed it this way for security - each session is treated as separate, so the auth token doesn’t carry over even in the same notebook. I’ve used Colab for two years and this hasn’t changed through any updates. The manual auth is annoying but it’s there to protect your Drive files from unauthorized access. You could work around it with service accounts or OAuth tokens, but that goes beyond the standard Colab tools you want to use.
Yeah, that’s just how Colab works. Every session starts fresh with no saved credentials, so you’ll always need to authenticate. I’ve used Colab for tons of data science projects and it’s always been this way. Even if you reconnect to the same notebook hours later, you’ll need to authenticate again. It’s annoying but Google does it for security since Colab runs on shared servers. The drive.mount() method will always ask for that manual verification.
yup, it’s super frustrating! but they prioritize security, so ur stuck with that link and code each time. no shortcuts without going third party, which I get y people are hesitant about.