Google Drive - what does offline even mean?

[m_singh]

I love Google Drive. Not so much the inability to copy files from Google Drive to your phone's SD card (Google Drive for android lacks some basic functionality that the desktop version has).

So, I am reading this very long thesis on my phone while in transit. I save it on Google Drive. Log in and mark it for offline viewing. That should be as good as having it on your SD card, right? Wrong.

Every day, at least once, maybe more than once, the Google Drive app tries to "update" the offline file. I kid you not. This is a PDF that I am reading. Just let me read. In peace. No. Google Drive has decided that it must always keep files in sync. Ordinarily I would applaud that level of seamlessness. But what it does drives me plain crazy.

I was on a long bus ride yesterday. No wifi anywhere. I do not want to use my crappy data connection (that is why I made it offline in the first place) to re-download the 18 MB file I already have on my phone. No biggie. I already have the file on my phone. I can just read what is already there, right? Wrong.

Google Drive, for the entire hour long bus ride, did not let me access the file because it felt it needed to update a file that will never be updated. I know it might have been, but it isn't, and what is the worst - there is no way to tell the app to not try to update certain files.

So, offline is not really offline. That makes Google Drive app's inability to copy files on to your SD card unforgivable. Either let me do something that basic, or if you can't, get the **** out of mucking things up for me. But that would be asking for too much common sense, wouldn't it?

I love Google's suite of apps on my desktop. I even like (much more than iOS) the OS. But this control freak (almost Apple-like) desire to control what I do with my files is off putting.

I finally just emailed the copy to myself when I got home, saved it to the SD card and am happy now. But never again will I trust the Google Drive android app to truly make things offline. Thanks for the wasted hour, Google. Traffic does not make for good scenery.

 

[BigRedGonzo]

Of course, this doesn't address the issue that your rant addressed, but it may be an acceptable solution. ES File Explorer works with GDrive, Dropbox, Skydrive and several others just like they were native drives. With it there is no need to ever access files through the native cloud app. You navigate to the cloud drive, copy the file and then navigate to where ever you want to drop it and hit paste. ES removes a lot of the cloud frustration and allows you to access any of your cloud storage with the same methodology.

Just for what its worth,
BigRedGonzo

 

[lexluthor]

Of course, this doesn't address the issue that your rant addressed, but it may be an acceptable solution. ES File Explorer works with GDrive, Dropbox, Skydrive and several others just like they were native drives. With it there is no need to ever access files through the native cloud app. You navigate to the cloud drive, copy the file and then navigate to where ever you want to drop it and hit paste. ES removes a lot of the cloud frustration and allows you to access any of your cloud storage with the same methodology.

Just for what its worth,
BigRedGonzo

Interesting. I use ES File Explorer, but never looked at that option. Thanks for pointing it out. Might be of use for me.

 

[Crashdamage]

Install a file manager such as File Explorer that integrates with cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox. Problem solved. You can now copy files or folders to/from Drive and the phone.

 

[umataro42]

Of course, this doesn't address the issue that your rant addressed, but it may be an acceptable solution. ES File Explorer works with GDrive, Dropbox, Skydrive and several others just like they were native drives. With it there is no need to ever access files through the native cloud app. You navigate to the cloud drive, copy the file and then navigate to where ever you want to drop it and hit paste. ES removes a lot of the cloud frustration and allows you to access any of your cloud storage with the same methodology.

Just for what its worth,
BigRedGonzo

Just what I was going to say. I even uninstalled all the cloud drive apps, since ES File Explorer works just as well, and in some cases better.

 

[divinebovine]

I've been seeing a lot of headlines like this for the past two days: "Google Play Books Now Lets You Read PDF And ePub Files From Your Personal Collection"

Perhaps you can make use of that new feature to accomplish the same PDF-reading goal without using gdrive's insufficient offline functionality. You would probably have to search for further information on how to make use of it, of course.