How to mirror any Google drive directory into Android for free
Google Drive gives you no option to synchronise directories into your android device.
Luckily, there is a free app (Folder Sync), that lets you do that very easily.
Setup Google drive (one-off for all the rules)
From the Accounts bottom tab, click “Add account” and connect with Google Drive.
Create the rule
From “Folderpairs” bottom tab, click the “plus”.
Select “To local folder”, and select the remove and local directory.
Careful with choosing correctly the target (normally an empty directory), the wrong one combined to “Sync deletion” (explain later) would wipe unwanted directories
Sync options:
Untick subdirectories if wanted.
Untick hidden files (I normally leave this in for rules, so the .nomedia files are also copied).
Sync deletion: I normally tick this options. This is necessary to have the directory on your phone an exact clone of the google drive one. New added files will disappear, but the idea here is copying one day remote to local.
Leave the other two as default, you’ll fix them later in case of errors (that will we enable to be notified).
Scheduling and connection
Select to run automatically e.g. once a day. You can of course click “Sync” and do it additionally any time you want from the “folderpairs” tab.
If the directory is big and you have a limited data mobile plan, or you don’t want to run it automatically when you are away from home and draining your battery, then you can select to run on wifi and only when charging.
Other options
I normally tick for notification on errors, so you will get notified if something got wrong (e.g. a file name not allowed in an android file system, or files with the same name allowed in Drive but not on ext4 file systems used in Android)
Another interesting option are “Filters”. With those one you can exclude a specific file or directory by name (exact or contained). In this case I’m excluding subdirectories “read” (where I place already read books) from the sync.
Save and run
Your rule will appear in the list. Click “Sync” to run immediately
Click on the clock/history button to see what files were updated at each run
Any error will appear with a red background, on which you can click and see the details.
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