Set Google Drive as your Primary Documents Folder on Windows and Mac! [How-To]

Here’s a quick tutorial to make Google Drive as your Primary Documents folder on your Windows or Mac Computer!

Google Drive launched recently, and has been making quite a lot of buzz. I’ve been messing up with this piece of cloud storage service lately and have gotten some tips to access the Google Drive Offline and some more are in the queue. I got impressed with the way Google Docs handle your documents and now, I decided to make it my primary Documents folder on both my Mac and Windows Machine.

So, here is the method that would make your Google Drive as the main Documents folder on your Windows XP or Windows Vista or Windows 7 or even on Windows 8 and Mac machines, allowing you to sync and backup files to Google Drive. This tutorial is useful for those who rely on Google Docs to backup their documents on the cloud and also for the new users who would prefer carrying their documents folder everywhere they go.

Remember that Google Drive not only Syncs documents, but also all the file types. It is just that Google Drive will be able to read only the documents like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, PDF, PSD files and such formats.

How to set Google Drive as your Primary Documents Folder on Mac and Windows:

The process is very simple. All you need to do is just change (Tweak) some settings in the Windows Explorer and on Mac, run a simple command. We are just going to create a symbolic link to the default Documents folder to the new Google Drive folder.

Before going ahead, you will have to download the Google Drive app on your computer, and sync it in a separate folder.

On Windows:

  1. Right-Click on the current Documents folder
  2. Select Properties
  3. Now, here, click on Include a folder option
  4. Point the location to the Google Drive folder which you’ve created earlier
  5. After Selecting the Google Drive Folder, it would show up in the default folders list.
  6. Now, Click on Set Save Location option. This would set the Google Drive folder as your default documents folder
  7. Click on Apply Changes 
  8. And that’s it. You’ve just set your Google Drive folder as your default Documents folder

On Mac:

  1. Fireup Terminal app on your Mac computer
  2. Now, type the following command: 
    cd Users/<your_user_name>/GoogleDrive
  3. Press Enter (Return Key)
  4. Now, type: 
    ln -s ~/Documents /Documents
  5. Press Enter (Return Key)
  6. This will set the Google Drive’s folder as your default Documents folder across your Mac.
If you are still unclear on what you’ve done, here’s my explanation. We just tricked the Operating System (Windows or Mac) to think that your new Google Drive’s folder is the default location to which the OS will save your documents to.
  • cimo

    Doesn’t the command ln -s ~/Documents /Documents as in that format on Mac just create a symbolic link to Documents folder of itself? Didn’t see any Documents folder in my Google Drive folder.

    •  @cimo Yes! It would create a symbolic link to the Documents folder!

      • cimo

         @karthikk Okay, but how does this relate to the matter about setting Google Drive folder as default Documents folder? Right now what I just see is that within the Documents folder is a symbolic link icon of the Documents folder itself, and not the content of Google Drive, nor isn’t the Drive syncing anything. :S

  • mharvey75

    Yeah, this is totally wrong. At best, what you might mean is “cd ~/Google Drive; ln -s ~/Documents .” 
     
    But even that won’t work, since Google Drive doesn’t follow symlinks.

  • Pingback: Complete Roundup of Google Drive Shortcuts! [Essentials]()

Subscribe to 4CAST

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 23 other subscribers