3 Ways to Share & Host Files on Google Drive
Introduction:
Google Drive is up there with the best cloud storage services (probably OneDrive and DropBox are on the podium too at time of writing). If you pay for the service, you have probably started putting pretty much all your files in there. As such, you sometimes want to share and allow others to download your files. This is easily done with Google Drive but it's not so simple to actually host files. This video discusses the whole process of sharing a file on Google Drive and, more importantly, how to create a direct download link. There are websites out there that do this (see below) but we go one step further and create a true direct link that avoids the message on larger files that states that a virus scan could not be run on the file.
This allows a clean download through programs such as WGet as well as keeping browsers of your page (assuming you're adding a download button to a website) within your look and feel.
What's Covered in the Video?
- A run through setting a standard share up to allow a download through the Google Drive interface. Basic stuff but really just to set context here (see 2:00).
- How to create a direct download link. This will only work for files up to a certain size before the virus scan warning kicks in (see 4:30).
- Host files on Google Drive. Create a direct download link bypassing the virus scan warning (see 9:20).
Other Useful Sites
- A nice simple form that does the direct download link conversion from your file ID
- Google Drive Help Pages
Things to Note
Note that this works with files that are uploaded to Google Drive. It does not work for files that are created by their system such as Google Documents, Sheets etc. I never use these so I haven't really looked into how this would be done. If you host files on Google Drive and share publicly, don't forget about all the copyright considerations and making sure you have the right to share the file. Cloud storage is nice and secure but not if Google decide to close your account down! :-)I hope this is useful and please comment or subscribe to our channel if you like what we do.