Copying/Pasting/Duplicating files from Finder on Mac fine stream not working

[PurpleShirtSam4]

Hi,

I have recently swapped our company from Dropbox to Google Workspace, and have noticed that if anyone is trying to copy/paste a file or folder (using Finder and the Google Drive app) that contains any sort of Google file format (think .gsheets/.gdocs) the expected file that should duplicate, vanishes without any warning confusing people in our business as to what is happening. Creating new files by using the right click > create new Google doc etc works fine, as well as the syncing, and opening of existing files so all of the other core features are working as expected.

I ran a test and the expected behavior of copy/paste/duplicate when the apps mode was switched over to "mirror" instead of "stream" files did work, however having everyone set their files to mirror is unsuitable, especially for the people who most need this functionality as they would have the most files to locally sync and are most reliant on the app being available in finder.

Is there any insights around this, is this a known issue, or is an improvement expected to be made?  

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Sounds like it may be a sort of a bug. I'd report it via the "send feedback" link in the Google Drive app:

You won't get a response, but the product team will see it.

My best guess is that it has to do with the nature of Google Docs: They're not actually files, they're entries in a database on Google's servers. so the "files" you see in Drive for desktop are actually just pointers to the right place on Google's servers (as you can see if you open them with a text editor on your Mac). So properly supporting Copy-and-Paste would be additional work, as they'd have to pick up that the pointer file on the Mac was duplicated, make a duplicate on the server, and update the pointer file to point to the new Google Doc.

It's been a while since I've tried, but I believe the reason that "mark for offline" would work is that in those cases, Google saves the documents out as MS Office-formated "real" files.

Hope that helps,

Ian

[PurpleShirtSam4]

Hopefully, it is just a bug, I have sent the feedback through the app like in the screenshot you sent! Thankfully it isn't a complete blocker, but it's a shame and I hope they can add this improvement.

I imagine it isn't an impossible task for them, as the Mirror files setting in the Google Drive app makes this functionality work, so it's just when in streaming files mode.