Any ETA for this? Insync is not that useful for my use case without this standard Google Drive feature. Insync is advertised on the web front page as doing more than Google Drive. However, it hasn’t yet reached functional parity… Thanks.
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We’re considering this for the next major release. Thank you all for the comments.
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vote!
Please add the support for files in multiple folders. You could implement this via hard or soft links on most file systems. On older filesystems with no support for file links you could add an option for multiple download. It is pretty important to have support for this in insync!
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The native Google Drive sync for Windows and Mac supports the Shift + Z Google Drive shortcut on the web. Would love to see support for this in Insync.
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Please add hardlink support for local files in several folders on gdrive. I use that feature heavily on gdrive. At least on Linux (which is what I use), this is easy to implement for files. If you experience issues on other platforms, please implement this on Linux only.
Gdrive allows to have the same folder in two different folders. This is not easily possible to do in Linux. It is fine for me if you only support hard links of files, but not hard links of directories
I often use shift-Z in Google Drive to place a file in multiple folders. Lack of InSync support is a real problem. What does the native Google Drive sync client do to these?
I just installed insynchq on a new Asus with Windows 10. An error message keeps coming up: “Your account [email] is paused because Google Drive is running and using the same folder (C:\ ….\Google Drive).”
If Google Drive is already syncing files from the folder, can insynchq still be used in the same folder to sync certain files to another online storage location?
I was just about to submit a bug report on this issue, when the clever pop-up pointed me to this topic. Yes I would like to revive it, as I think the issue is quite unresolved. As the collaborations that use GDrive as the main repository become bigger and more complex, the need to properly support syncing files-in-multiple-locations becomes more and more indispensable.
Example: In a synced root folder on GDrive, I have created a share for a collaboration project, and a colleague has moved it to his own ‘projects’ folder for his convenience. This folder is within the scope of synchronisation. Insync has now somehow chosen to only sync the folder only in my colleague’s projects folder, and not place it in the root folder where I created it.
As I see it, there are several ways in which Insync could do this
- Support symbolic links on the local file system.
- Ask me where to place a file locally, if this file occurs in more than one location on GDrive
- Support a ‘sync-to-alternate-location’ operation
I have not looked at the way the Google Drive app supports this feature; if they do it properly it would also be possible to take a cue from them.
Kind regards,
Marc
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Hi Marc,
Just tried this on my end with the following use case:
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I placed File 1 in two locations, Folder A and Folder B
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In my Insync folder, File 1 just synced to Folder A and not Folder B
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Using selective sync I unsynced File 1 from Folder A
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It then synced to Folder B. So it’s not in B initially, but when I unsynced the file from A, it appeared on B
Hope this helped! Thanks for your input as well! 
@jaduenas thanks for the workaround. A bit of a kludge, but solves my main problem, i.e. I need a file synced to a specific folder.
Thanks
Allright, I can confirm that this can act as 'the ‘sync to alternate location’ operation that I was looking for. I knew selective sync, but I never would have guessed that it would help me here. Still, customer happy!
Regards -
Marc
Unfortunately, jaduenas answer from Jan 23 does not solve this issue for my company’s usage of Google Drive. We often place files and folders in Google Drive in multiple directories, which makes it very difficult to use Insync in a practical way (for other than backup), as we might need to look through 5-10 folders before finding the one where the file/folder we’re looking for is located.
It would strictly be an un-maintainable job for every employee to configure the selective sync for all such files and folders, which also might be changed by other employees without notification (existing files may be added to additional new folders at any time).
Other than this final issue, Insync is working beautifully, - but before this is handled by e.g. native OS symlinks, I can’t recommend it for our usage. If such a feature is added though, I will make sure to recommend that this is used company-wide, and also to other partners, family and friends.
Do you have any plans on implementing a solution for this?
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I completely agree with larsmagne. For some the workaround may work, but for an organization there is no way we can implement something like that. Insync, this is a basic feature of Google Drive. When will we be able to have this feature? I also cannot use Insync as I’ve wanted to because of this major issue. Please take time to fix this. Thank you!
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And here I am three years later and it’s biting me again, with a serious problem.
Insync does not support the basic Google Drive functions due to this, and it appears to be the only missing point. Is there any hope that this might be resolved at some point?
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Dear Insync, please add support for syncing files in multiple folders. At least on Linux, this functionality of Google Drive can be mapped with hard links. Please provide an update on this most wanted feature request, thanks!
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I bought Insync almost 2 years ago now, but have been postponing “figuring out my long term storage solution” until this feature was implemented.
we are adding this ability in insync 3 
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@terpua Thanks for that information. When is insync 3 coming out?
I’m glad there’s been some discussion about this. Here’s my 2 cents, which I typed up before reading this thread:
I’ve only started using Insync yesterday.
I have some files and folders that are located in more than one place on my Google Drive. I achieved this by pressing Shift + Z on my keyboard when the item was selected in the web app. I did this to help make my Drive easier to use; also, some PDFs are shared with other people in a separate folder to where I update them (on TeX) in my own folders.
I have my “Masters degree” folder in the top level of my drive so that it’s easier to access, but it’s also buried inside Work > University > Economics. It didn’t turn up at the top level, but that wasn’t so much of a problem, because I just turned off the sync for the folder that is buried inside my other folders.
However, I wanted to start using Insync to work on my LaTeX documents (the PDFs I was talking about). The PDF needs to be in the same folder as my .tex file for that to work, but now the one PDF is in the folder which is shared with other people… … … I guess I could just turn off the sync for the file in that shared folder, and do that manually for each file with this issue.
But, I’ve put files and folders in multiple locations hundreds of times, so it would be very complicated for me to figure out all the un-syncing settings.
Suggestion (feature request): In your development, please consider supporting this use case, where a single file or folder appears in multiple places on my Google Drive.
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