**If you’re used to accessing your Google Drive in the _Nautilus_ file manager, a heads-up that the feature is no longer available in GNOME 50, which is the desktop version the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS uses.**
While _GNOME_ _Online Accounts_ (GOA) integration continues to allow you to sign in to your Google account to enable supported apps to access your contacts, mail and calendar data securely, the toggle to give access to files is now gone.
It’s that toggle that allows you to remotely mount your Google Drive in _Nautilus’_ sidebar.
The Ubuntu 26.04 LTS beta may show a _Files_ toggle, but the feature itself won’t work. If you try to open your Google Drive in Nautilus after enabling it via GOA, you will see an “Unable to access…” account error.
A set of package updates for GOA are rolling out to Ubuntu 26.04 development builds which disable the toggle.
### Why does GNOME 50 doesn’t support Google Drive
GNOME developer Emmanuele Bassi has confirmed the feature is “no longer supported” on the GNOME Discourse forum, and explains why.
GNOME’s Google Drive access relies on `libgdata`, a library that acts as a communication bridge between GNOME apps and Google APIs.
But it’s had no active maintainer for nearly four years.
In December 2022, GNOME’s Michael Catanzaro posted a public call for volunteers to take over the maintenance of libgdata. In his call he warned that, if nobody did, integrations that rely on it may eventually stop working.
Nobody stepped up.
GVFS, the virtual filesystem layer that gives GNOME apps (like _Nautilus_) access to remote storage backends (like Google Drive), dropped its libgdata dependency last year, noting it’s “unmaintained and the only thing keeping `libsoup2` in GNOME”.
And libsoup2? Unmaintained, and full of security vulnerabilities.
### Alternative approaches are available
Feature still works in older versions, like on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
If you plan on upgrading to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, it’s worth being aware of this deprecation. With no native Google Drive app for Linux, integrations like this have been ‘the next best thing’, especially being available in GNOME directly.
Bassi did suggest those who wish to restore Google Drive functionality in a future update should reach out to the GVFS maintainer, but Catanzaro has said this would require a fork of libgdata as the project has now been archived.
Alternatives methods for accessing Google Drive on Linux exist, the most popular of which is `rclone`. This also mounts Google Drive as a local filesystem. You can install that from the Ubuntu repositories, and it doesn’t GOA
Google Drive Nautilus integration continues to work on earlier versions of GNOME, e.g., on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The feature removal only affects GNOME 50, e.g., Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
GNOME 50 dropped support for accessing Google Drive files If you’re used to accessing your Google Drive in the Nautilus file manager, a heads-up that the feature is no longer available in GNOME 5...
#News #GNOME #50 #google #drive #Ubuntu #26.04 #LTS
Origin | Interest | Match
0
0
0
0