Save Internet files directly to Google Drive

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 12, 2012
Updated • Dec 12, 2012
Google Chrome, Google Chrome extensions
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Google Drive is Google's cloud hosting service that all Google account owners can use to store and sync data. Free users get 5 Gigabyte of online space and a couple of applications to access the drive contents directly on systems such as Windows, OS X or Android.

Save to Google Drive is a new extension for the Google Chrome browser by the Google Drive team that lets you save data directly from the Internet to your Google Drive storage.

The extension adds a new right-click context menu to Chrome that you can make use of to save the right-clicked file to your storage. You can for instance use it to save images that you like right to Google Drive, but also documents, other media, programs and even hyperlinks.

First time you make use of the option you may receive a notification that the extension requests access to Google Docs which you need to grant to make use of it.

The extension displays a dialog whenever you save files to your Google Drive storage. The dialog displays the saving progress and a status message in the end detailing whether the operation was successful or not.

save to google drive

A click on the file name itself opens it on Google Drive directly. You can alternatively use the rename or trash buttons in the dialog window to rename the file name or move it to trash.

You may also notice the Google Drive icon that the extension adds to the Chrome browser. You can use it to send HTML pages and other contents that are open in the active tab to Google Drive. A web page is saved in png format by the way, not in its original format by default. You can modify that selection with a right-click on the Google Drive icon and the selection of Options. Here you can switch the saving of HTML pages from "image of entire page (png)" to "Image of visible page (png)", "HTML Source (html)", "Web archive (mht)" or "Google Document".

Here you can furthermore select to convert files into Google format. CSV files would for instance automatically be converted to Google format when you enable the option and save files of the type to Google Drive.

The extension lacks a couple of features that would come in handy. You can't select a folder you want files to be saved in for instance, which means that you will have to manually move them around on Google Drive if you do not want the files to be listed in root. It is also not possible to save files directly from the search results, at least not pdf documents which I did try to save. You have to open them in a new tab and save them from there.

Lastly, the option to take screenshots should include at least an option to save only a selection on the page and not all of it.

You may also run into a file size limit when you try to save large files to Google Drive this way. A try to save Linux Mint, a 900 Megabyte download failed for instance, while a 12 Megabyte download was no problem. It is also important to note that only http files are supported right now, while ftp is not.

Still, if you are an active Google Drive user you may want to use the extension for Chrome to save time when saving files and documents while you are browsing the Internet.

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Comments

  1. Sam said on December 17, 2013 at 9:22 pm
    Reply

    hm useful article. I use ctrlq project developed by amit. it works fine for me.

  2. Jonathan said on December 12, 2012 at 5:00 pm
    Reply

    Does something like this exist in FF as well?

  3. KoalaBear said on December 12, 2012 at 12:09 pm
    Reply

    Ahh. I didn’t knew it also works for saving ‘downloads’. Works great. Also the page screenshots works great.

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