Some advice for iPhone and Mac users who store their images and videos on Google Drive

Last update: Thursday 6/19/25

This note offers some advice for iPhone and Mac users who store their images and videos on Google Drive via the app they downloaded from the App Store ➡ There's a better way to install Google Drive.

Caveat: This note is written for computer savvy readers who embrace the notion that one should always have up-to-date local backup copies of important files. Readers who have not acquired this wisdom the hard way are unlikely not find any value in this note's recommendations.

A. Sharing | B. Local & Cloud | C. Streaming vs Mirror

A. Sharing files

Although the rest of this note will focus on storing files, Google’s sales pitch for its drive is an unsubtle jab at Apple’s cumbersome procedures for sharing files, via iCloud and Dropbox, especially with friends and associates who do not have Apple devices, i.e., who do not have access to iCloud.  

By contrast, with a few clicks, as in ChatGPT's description in the following paragraph, Google drive enables you to share images, videos, or any other kind of file with anyone who has access to the Internet, regardless of the kind of platform they’re on. 

Google Drive: One Step, One Button, Universally Compatible

1. Open Google Drive.
2. Tap the three-dot menu next to the file or folder.
3. Tap “Share.”
4. Choose:
   
• “Anyone with the link” (instant, no login needed),
• or type in emails for specific access.
5. Done.

So Google beats Apple with regards to sharing files. Google's "It just works" simplicity is the kind of procedure one would have expected from Apple. Indeed, on 6/17/25 the App Store noted that 6.9 million Apple device users had downloaded the Google Drive app, but only 614 thousand had downloaded The Dropbox app. Now let's move on to storing files.

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B.  Local & Cloud

The Google Drive app in the App Store only stores files in one place, in Google’s cloud. This app is an abridged version of the full "Google Drive for Desktop" app that is found on a Google download website. The full app can store files in the Google cloud and on a user’s desktop, laptop, or external drive. Google calls the local copy the“mirror” copy, as if the copy in Google’s cloud was the original set of files.

In the beginning … 2012

Ironically, when Google first introduced Google Drive in 2012, the copy of the users files in the cloud was called the “backup”, an honest description of its function. Google offered to host the backup copy of a user’s files in its cloud for a very low monthly subscription fee.

• If the user changed a file on their desktop or laptop or external drive, Google made the same change to the backup copy of the file in the cloud. 
  
  
• If a user added or deleted a file to or from their desktop, laptop, or external drive, Google added a copy of the new file to the collection in the cloud or deleted the copy from the cloud.
  
  
• On the other hand, if a user added, deleted, or changed the copy of a file in the Google cloud, Google automatically sent the same additions, deletions or changes to the file in the user’s desktop, laptop, or external drive.
  
  
• Changes were not made right away, but at specified intervals when the two collections were synchronized to maintain the requirement that the backup collection in the cloud would be identical to the original collection on the users Desktop, laptop, or external drive.

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The previous section of this note mentioned that Google Drive made it easy for users to share files with friends and associates, even if their friends and associates did not own Apple devices. But for users who took photos and videos on their iPhones, the most important sharing that Google facilitated was with the users themselves. The fun photos they took on their iPhones of elephants and zebras in the zoo were saved to Google’s cloud, then automatically downloaded to their desktops, laptops, or external drives by time they got back home. So they owned a collection of photos, videos, spreadsheets, etc on their desktops, laptops, or external drives AND had access to a backup copy of this important collection in the Google cloud. 

Two game changers during a transition period 2016 to 2022

• Apple started making its own chips again, Apple Silicon ... M1, M2, M3, etc ➡ It was no longer possible to add more memory or add more internal solid state storage to desktops and laptops. If more storage was needed for important files, the only solution was more external storage.
  
  
• Fortunately, this limitation was offset by the emergence of inexpensive large capacity solid state external drives, e.g., 2 terrabyte SSD for only $149 (2TB Sandisk @ Amazon)

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C. Streaming vs. Mirror

Section A of this note mentioned the fact that by 6/17/25, 6.9 million Apple device users had downloaded the Google Drive app from the App Store. Installing this abridged version gave users access to Google’s copy of their files in Google cloud in “Streaming” mode. It did not create a mirror copy on their desktops, laptops, or external drives. 

This following paragraphs describe a step-by-step installation of the full version, called “Google Drive for Desktop”, and the creation of a local “Mirror” copy of a user’s files on an external solid-state device.

1. Purchase a high capacity solid-state device (SSD), at least 2 TB, and attach it to one of your desktops or laptops, preferably a desktop because your SSD should remain attached “all of the time”.

2. Install Google Drive for Desktop.

• Go to Google Drive’s official download page at httpthe s://google.com/drive#download
  
  
• Download the Mac version to your external SSD
  
  
• Configure the app in “Mirror” mode by following the detailed instructions on Google’s Help page at https://support.google.com/drive/answer/13401938#

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3. Think of your local copy as an “archive”, as suggested by the following diagram. Notice that all information flows from your iPhone, desktops , and laptops to the Google cloud, then flows from the Google cloud down to the SSD that holds your archive.  

In other words, even when you’re sitting at the desktop to which the SSD is attached, you should choose to interact with the copies of your files in the Google cloud, not with your archive. The files in the cloud are the “working” copies. So the changes to your working copies will be immediately available to your iPhone, your other desktops and laptops, and to your friends and associates with whom you share your files. 

Your changes will be downloaded from the working copies to your archive during the next synchronization cycles, which may take 10, 15, or 20 minutes, depending on the extent of your changes and the number of cycles required to download all of them to your archive.

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