How do Drive Shortcuts are handled?

Google has changed the way files/folders are shared, and now they have shortcuts, which are basically pointers.

Insync 1.x does not sync shortcuts; those files/folder are invisible for Insync. Does 3.x handle the new shortcuts?

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Hi @ssardina,

We do not support this Google Drive feature yet, but our engineers are looking into this already. :slight_smile:

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This is a much needed feature in order to be able to properly collaborate with multiple people. At the moment, there is no possibility to share a folder with multiple people

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Totally agree. But it seems they have other bigger issues to deal with in 3.x

Which version are you using @silentdrummer? I am stuck with 1.5.7 as 3.x seems to not work well.

Any news on this? This is one of THE features that used to make Insync unique and so much better. Does version 3.x support that now or not yet?

This is super important as shortcuts completely change the syncing behavior in Insync. Is there any update on this?

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Hi! My apologies for the lack of updates-- I’ll follow this up with our engineers and update this thread accordingly.

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Yes, please hurry up with this feature.

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Thank you for following up, I will give our team a nudge!

Is there a work around for this? Someone shared a folder with me, but I can’t figure out a way to get it to sync to my linux machine. I used to be able to drag that folder from “Shared WIth Me” to “My Drive” and insync would sync it. Now I just get a link on my linux drive. What is the way to get insync to sync it?

Hey @Lane_Brooks,

Right now, since Google Drive uses shortcuts, we currently don’t have a workaround to bring your actual shared folders to My Drive. What we can recommend in the mean time is to sync the shared files/folder from “Shared with me” instead, so you can access it locally.

Any news on this? I was quite surprised when I realized shortcuts are not synced.

Hi Drew,

This is lined up in our developer’s timeline. :slight_smile: There’s no ETA yet on this feature but we’ll announce as soon as we get a clearer picture!

I am not seeing shortcut being sync to local drive. At least a shortcut that open a browser should be sync to local drive. Any udpate on this?

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Hi @jonathantse,

I’ll check it out with our engineers to get an update. Thank you for bumping this.

Hi @jonathantse,

This is in the pipeline but we do not have an ETA for it yet. For now, you can navigate to the actual location of said file and sync that to your local machine.

+1 on the importance of the feature.

Google’s “one single endless flat list” of shared-with-me items is extremely cumbersome when syncing to a local machine. I use the local copies in combination with Devonthink, which I use to index, display, and virtually organize the files - I only use files from Google Drive this way, I don’t use the web-interface at all.

This problem is aggravated by the lack of other features in Insync, such as one-way syncing for individual files.

Having the shortcuts resolved to the target file when synching would be incredibly helpful. Ideally (for my use cases), I could not even tell the difference between a shortcut and an actual file on my local machine.

All this said, are there any updates, @mia?

Cheers,
-i

Hello, @ionos!

This is still in our pipeline, however it needed to take a step back as we’re prioritizing other syncing issues and improvements on the app.

I will bring this up with our engineers once more to reiterate the feature’s importance for our users. Thank you!

So please allow my to throw in my 2 cents and iterate once more, if it’s any use. I’m on the verge of quitting Insync and using Google’s own sync agent because of this.

This feature would actually make me get a new subscription. I have been holding out on making any investments given that it is not there.