Inconsistent indexing of Google Drive (file stream app installed)

[katzja]

I am a new Alfred user (4.2.1[1187]). I am finding that indexing of files on Google Drive is inconsistent. For example when I was searching for "Acera Surgical..." Alfred did display it correctly:

 

But when I search for "Vai and Sosulski..." the Google Drive entry didn't appear:

 

Any advice? Alfred seems to be indexing Dropbox, OneDrive, my hard drive just fine.

[katzja]

Possibly found solution as I kept searching:

 

[deanishe]

Hi @katzja, welcome to the forum.

 

Generally, you probably wouldn't want to add your Google Drive to Alfred's default scope, but if Spotlight finds a file, Alfred should be able to, too.

 

The problem is a well-known, long-standing one. GDFS is a virtual filesystem, so it has to tell macOS what’s on the filesystem in order for Spotlight, Alfred etc. to be able to search it. GDFS is really bad at doing this.

 

If you only have one Google Drive—and enough disk space—the old Google Drive app that actually synced files to your disk drive works perfectly with Spotlight and Alfred because macOS takes care of the indexing itself.

 

I'm going to lock this thread because the problem is with GDFS and there's nothing Alfred can realistically do to work around it.

 

There are a bunch of existing threads about GDFS, which would be the best places to post your experiences and read other people's.

 

https://www.alfredforum.com/search/?q=google drive file stream&quick=1&type=forums_topic