Hi there. I;m just looking for a bit of info really.
I used google drive quite often in windows but i see there’s a lovely integration built into in ubuntu - which honestly is awesome…
Only thing letting it down for me is the transfer speeds seem to be super slow. I’m not sure if this is a bug or a feature, if it’s something I can fix, or if Canonical plan to have their own similar paid services?
Thanks for any info or suggestions 
Please post support questions (“transfer speeds seem to be super slow”) in the Support and Help category.
I have moved this one for you.
We have no insight into Canonical business planning (“if Canonical plan to have their own similar paid services”). FYI: There was an Ubuntu cloud storage service…terminated a decade ago.
Let’s look into your speed issue before making assumptions.
I didn’t read it quite like that.
It could be a “feature” as in “Don’t kick the crap out of the back end service, so we rate limit the connections or data volumes”. It doesn’t have to mean an intentional paywall to high-speed transfers.
A fair point. Thanks for the reflection.
I have suitably edited to eliminate the morning snark.
Thanks.
Tbh I thought I HAD navigated to help and support, searched for similar issues then created a new topic from that area after nothing similar came up.
@popey is correct. I was thinking more along the lines of maybe the integration isn’t designed to be used the way I’m trying to use it.
@ian-weisser I come in peace. I was actually super impressed how seamlessly the drive integrates. It’s perfect - other than the speed in my case.
Anyhow, I’m wondering if there’s a workaround or maybe it’s a known issue and being worked on, so therefore a ‘waitaround’ is in order ? I’m also considering if Wine might be useful here? Any further reading, info, suggestions would be very welcome. I’ve not seen a reason for transfers to be limited but i’m very green to all of this.
Edit: I can actually see how the end of my initial post could have come across as an insinuation now I’ve read it… It wasn’t. I actually meant that if there was a paid service, I’d happily bring my money here, supporting this project instead.
Honestly, just sounds like a bug. I have seen other people report it being slow. I don’t use it so can’t tell right now. But if it’s reproducibly bad, perhaps a bug report is in order.
Run this and tell it how to reproduce the issue.
ubuntu-bug gnome-online-accounts
How are we determining this? And that it’s unique to Google Drive? If it is similarly problematic through their web interface?
The file copy dialog has a thing telling you how fast files are being copied.
But that’s only relevant in proportion to the speed of your connection. If it’s slow, but your connection is slow, well, that isn’t strange at all.
Sorry, I was assuming OP had that part nailed.
I think that’s probably a safe assumption, but I have been bit so many times by safe assumptions that I just try to avoid assumptions in general.
downloads are ~200kbps in the integrated environment but over time it starts to slow further.
I have a reliable 1gb connection that runs full steam through google’s web version of drive. I’ve tested it for a few days and over multiple Ubuntu flavours. It definitely feels like a issue contained in the Ubuntu integration implementation.
Hm. I wonder if Google is rate limiting. I think @popey 's suggestion to file a bug is probably best here to investigate this.
GPT says this:
Underlying Cause:
The slowdown seems related to the web service layer implemented by GNOME Online Accounts and gvfs. This layer converts file operations into API calls, and these calls can be slower compared to a dedicated client that is optimized for bulk transfers.
It also says it’s a known issue so it seems I might have to forget Gdrive for now.
What is GPT? Did you mean chatGPT? Because in that case, please don’t. It will just put rubbish mis-info inside serious bug-reports. You can use chatGPT to generate ideas, get links to related information. You CANNOT take their output for true. Let alone divine some solid advice as “forget Gdrive”.
FWIW I came here because my Google Drive is always very very slow (up to a minute to “create a folder”). Just now, it crapped out after a very long wait, and after re-establishing the connection (which results in duplicate mounts showing) I got a snappy working drive for the first time in ages. But then, opening 4 pdfs in a row, it crapped out again (crashing nautilus in the process).
An interesting detail here is that sometimes I see purple “shortcut arrow” icon decorator on every directory entry in Nautilus. It seems to be random when that happens.
GDrive works well in a browser, have you checked the speed there for comparison ?
What might be useful is to copy a known quantity - for example a 500MB video - into and out of Google Drive and time it. Provide details of your connection, and whether other activities (such as uploading/downloading somewhere else) is faster/comparable.
I’m also keen to see if there’s some debugging option we can do in the terminal.
Personally I monitor the traffic using a tool called bandwhich which can help identify the exact speed of transfers.
I’m pretty sure this was something to do with an API rate limit (google introduced for security purposes) that just nerfs the Gnome virtual file system’s attempts to retrieve ‘large’ amounts of data - because it does so in many small ‘hits’, rapidly, then gets limited.
I’m yet to find a solution in any linux distro/de