Alfred stopped finding files on Google Drive File Stream

[Henry31]

I got a pretty honest answer from the Google support, I would like to share with you. Hopefully for others helpful.

 

Quote

Thank you for contacting me back, I was checking the information with my high level department, in this specific matter my best recommendation is to wait until Google releases a new update to improve the integration with the MacOS feature. Answering your last question we do not recommend to use the previous versions because the executable files for the previous versions are no longer available. Since the previous versions are deprecated, there are no updates for those, that means you could face incompatibility issues with the Google Drive web UI. we provided a feedback to our engineering team, in order to verify this particular situation with the new version. Keep in mind that sometimes the new versions take some time to be compatible with all the features in the operating systems. Let's try and use the current workarounds you found and you can keep tracking more details about the new version using this link:
https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/07/google-drive-backup-and-sync-transition.html

 

The link to the Google-Blog will explain what I explain in my last post.

 

It seems that the only solution is to wait for an update by Gooogle.

 

@Michal Bryxí regarding this blog post, you have time until October 1, 2021 to update. Plenty of time for Google to provide an update that solves the spotlight issue.

 

Only solution for me is to wait, or try the new solution @Vero explained with the Google API and an Alfred API, that sounds very interesting.

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, Henry31 said:

It seems that the only solution is to wait for an update by Gooogle.

 

We've been waiting for Google to make GDFS work reliably with Spotlight indexing for years now…

 

I suspect a lot of the problems are on Apple's side, as no virtual FS seems to work reliably with macOS's indexing.

[Henry31]

2 hours ago, deanishe said:

We've been waiting for Google to make GDFS work reliably with Spotlight indexing for years now…

 

To be honest, I did not have any problems with spotlight indexing and GDFS. But for me personally I think most of my files were "available offline", maybe that does the trick for me?

[egoldin]

I'm also having this same issue. I used to use Dropbox, which never had any issues with Spotlight indexing/Alfred search. I switched to Google's "Shared Drives" feature via Google Workspace, which uses Google's new combined "Google Drive" app. 

 

I did put the following into Terminal and that seems to have fixed the issue, for now: 

 

Quote

mdutil -i on /Volumes/GoogleDrive

 

But reading other posts, I think that's a temporary fix. I also contacted Google. Here's what they said: 

Quote

 

They were notifying me that since Drive for desktop doesn't work with the actual files, locally, but with the cache information of them, Spotlight doesn't really index them. They are aware of this and the developers are working to better integrated Drive for desktop but as of now, it doesn't fully work. Your Terminal entry above is a workaround while our developers get the integration to work completely. There is a internal feature request for this and I have already added your domain to it to create some more demand for this to work.

 

 

[deanishe]

4 hours ago, egoldin said:

There is a internal feature request for this and I have already added your domain to it to create some more demand for this to work.

 

I'm honestly surprised that a lot more people aren't complaining about GDFS not working with Spotlight.

[vitor]

I’m looking into possibilities here, but I’m not a Google Drive user. For those of you who are and looking for a fix, a few questions.

I see there are two methods of adding to Google Drive:

• The online files, represented locally inside /Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive. In the Google Drive app preferences, this is “Google Drive, Folders from Drive” and defaults to “Stream Files”.
• The local synced files, which behave like Dropbox. In the Google Drive app preferences, this is “My Mac, Folders from your computer” and defaults to asking you to “Add folder”.

Seems like files in the second option (“Folders from your computer”) would be indexable by Spotlight and Alfred, and that the issue everyone is facing is related to the first point (“Folders from Drive”). Is that correct?

 

And is everyone on the correct app, Google Drive for desktop?

If so, what do you get if you open a terminal and run (paste the code and press ↵):

 

ls -R "/Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive"

 

Does it show all your files and directories? Are some missing? If so, do you have any guess as to why some might be missing and others not (e.g. having accessed them recently).

Looking for responses both if it works and if it doesn’t.

Edited August 11, 2021 by vitor

[Henry31]

8 minutes ago, vitor said:

Seems like files in the second option would be indexable by Spotlight and Alfred, and that the issue everyone is facing is related to the first point. Is that correct?

 

No, this is not correct.

 

Before the Google Drive Backup, only files which are locally synced on my disk where indexable by Spotlight and Alfred, I GUESS. I'm not 100% sure how it behaves with only online files, because I usually synced all my Google Drive files.

 

So the issue is related to local synced files, which behave like Dropbox.

 

To the command

ls -R

will print out a very long list of files because it is the 'recursive' parameter. Did you mean another command?

 

For example, If I type in

ls -lisah

I get the following output:

 

 

I hope this helps...

 

Thanks a lot for any investigating, this issue is very annoying and slowest my down every day in my daily workflow...

 

[vitor]

19 minutes ago, Henry31 said:

Before the Google Drive Backup, only files which are locally synced on my disk where indexable by Spotlight and Alfred

 

That seems to be the same thing I said. I’ve edited the previous post so we have specific nomenclature (“Folders from Drive” and “Folders from your computer”). Can you clarify what works and doesn’t taking that into account?

 

Also, it’s important to check if you’re on the correct app (also added above).

 

16 minutes ago, Henry31 said:

will print out a very long list of files because it is the 'recursive' parameter. Did you mean another command?

 

I do mean the recursive listing. The goal is to figure out if despite not being indexed by Spotlight, the files can be listed via common CLI tools. The recursive flag is so you can check if only some are listed.

 

I saw in another thread (and now your screenshot) that you moved the default online sync folder. That might not be a good idea, and since it didn’t fix your problem, it might be best to put it back.

[alfredpanda]

Thanks for looking into this.

 

I "stream" all of my files in Drive - I don't keep any of them local. I'm pretty sure Spotlight used to still index these folders and files before the Apple updates.

 

Quote

ls -R "/Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive"

 

If I run this then I see all of the "streamed" folders and files just fine.

[Henry31]

1 hour ago, vitor said:

I do mean the recursive listing. The goal is to figure out if despite not being indexed by Spotlight, the files can be listed via common CLI tools. The recursive flag is so you can check if only some are listed.

 

Ah okay I understand.

 

I will get a long list with all "streamed" folders and files, everything seems fine.

 

1 hour ago, vitor said:

That seems to be the same thing I said. I’ve edited the previous post so we have specific nomenclature (“Folders from Drive” and “Folders from your computer”). Can you clarify what works and doesn’t taking that into account?

 

I "stream" files all of my files from Google Drive.

 

And then make most of the folders and files "offline available".

 

1 hour ago, vitor said:

I saw in another thread (and now your screenshot) that you moved the default online sync folder. That might not be a good idea, and since it didn’t fix your problem, it might be best to put it back.

 

That's exactly what I thought, for this reason I removed Google Drive completely once and left the folder with the default settings. This unfortunately led to the same error and resulted in no improvement.

 

[vitor]

The good news are that so far my current assumptions seem to be holding up, and that could lead to a workaround. Would like to have at least one or two more people confirm the behaviour, but so far I’m feeling optimistic.

[deanishe]

16 hours ago, vitor said:

Would like to have at least one or two more people confirm the behaviour

 

I use Google Drive. In my experience, everything that is mirrored (i.e. there's actually a copy on disk locally) is reliably indexed, and everything that's streamed (i.e. there isn't a local copy by default) isn't.

 

If I cared enough about GD to want to search it, I’d use /usr/bin/find: the virtual FS seems to work perfectly well. Just not the indexing.

[alexcr]

Been affected by this too ; just rebuilt the Spotlight index with

mdutil -E -a

and although mdutil says "Error: unknown indexing state" on some folders (both in and out of my drive folder, weird) I can now find with Spotlight files both "streamed" from the new GDrive app and specific folders synced to Google Drive without problem.

 

However, Alfred, even after reloading its cache, can’t find neither with the file search feature.

[vitor]

1 minute ago, alexcr said:

just rebuilt the Spotlight index with

 

That’s only temporary.

[alexcr]

22 minutes ago, vitor said:

 

That’s only temporary.

 

A temporary fix is better than no fix.

 

The point of my post was to show the discrepancy between what files Spotlight can find, and what files Alfred can find.

[vitor]

1 minute ago, alexcr said:

A temporary fix is better than no fix.

 

I’m not deriding your post, I’m pointing out that workaround is already known but inconsistent. Go back to yesterday and you’ll see I’m looking into alternatives.

[vitor]

Would you mind testing this Workflow (temporary link)? From the data above, it should work, but will need confirmation from Google Drive users.

Type gd in Alfred and the rest should be obvious.

If it works as intended, another Workflow will be released at a later time (with icon, README, auto-updating…).

[alexcr]

Sorry pulled all my files out of this "driveFS" ; lost too much time already with this.

 

Thanks though.

[vitor]

22 minutes ago, alexcr said:

Sorry pulled all my files out of this "driveFS" ; lost too much time already with this.

 

Thanks though.

 

Not an issue. The Workflow is for anyone with Google Drive to try. I am mostly expecting feedback from @Henry31 and @alfredpanda since they confirmed the behaviour above.

[alfredpanda]

On 8/13/2021 at 11:42 AM, vitor said:

Would you mind testing this Workflow (temporary link)? From the data above, it should work, but will need confirmation from Google Drive users.

Type gd in Alfred and the rest should be obvious.

If it works as intended, another Workflow will be released at a later time (with icon, README, auto-updating…).

Thanks for keeping at it with us 🙂

This is what I see - it doesn't seem to progress any further.

[vitor]

6 minutes ago, alfredpanda said:

This is what I see - it doesn't seem to progress any further.

 

I’m not seeing a reason for it to hang. It should either finish or give an error.

• How long have you waited?
  
• Do you have a lot of files?
  
• Is your Google Drive directory at /Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive or have you moved it?
• What’s your macOS version?
• What’s your Alfred version?
  

[alfredpanda]

4 minutes ago, vitor said:

 

I’m not seeing a reason for it to hang. It should either finish or give an error.

• How long have you waited?
• Do you have a lot of files?
• Is your Google Drive directory at /Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive or have you moved it?
• What’s your macOS version?
• What’s your Alfred version?

 

• Waited ~15 mins since initially starting
• Yeah theres a few hundred GB
• Google Drive directory is still at /Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) - Big Sur 11.5
• Alfred 4.5.1 [1256]

Thanks!

 

[vitor]

Let’s wait for @Henry31’s feedback before going onto next steps.

[Henry31]

On 8/14/2021 at 11:49 PM, vitor said:

Let’s wait for @Henry31’s feedback before going onto next steps.

 

Thanks @vitor for helping us here with this issue.

 

I have the same results as @alfredpanda has reported.

 

I change the location of the Google Drive folder

 

# from
Gdrive_path = Pathname.new('/Volumes/GoogleDrive/My Drive')

# I chagned to:
Gdrive_path = Pathname.new('/Users/henryauffahrt/Google Drive - AufBau')

 

Under '/volumes/' I only find the disc of my MacBook. 

 

Here is a screenshot with the logging console:

[Yiching]

Hi everyone, i am pretty new to alfred and now using the new GD. I tried the following temporary fix

On 7/24/2021 at 12:40 AM, egoldin said:

Quote

mdutil -i on /Volumes/GoogleDrive

 

but i got an error of:

Error: invalid operation.

Error: unknown indexing state.

 

I am only indexing part of the GD streamed files since some files under the GD root are not downloaded locally and I don't want them to be downloaded (due to size concern). Does anyone know how to fix this and get the temporary fix working? 

 

Also, the File Troubleshooting in Alfred told me 

"/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/GoogleDrive:
    Indexing disabled."