If you contact Google Workspace support about a Google Drive for desktop issue, you might be asked to send log files to help resolve the problem.
Capture log files in the application
On a Mac
- On your computer, click Drive for desktop
on the menu bar at the top right.
- Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings
Generate Diagnostic Info.
You’ll get a notification when the ZIP file of information is added to your desktop. -
Send the ZIP file to your support agent.
On Windows
- On your computer, click Drive for desktop
on the taskbar at the bottom right.
- Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings
Generate Diagnostic Info.
You’ll get a notification when the ZIP file of information is added to your desktop. -
Send the ZIP file to your support agent.
Capture log files when the application is not available
On a Mac
- Open Finder.
- Press Command+Shift+g.
- Enter ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS and press Enter.
- Right-click the Logs folder and select Compress “Logs”.
- Send the Logs.zip file to your support agent.
On Windows
- Open File Explorer.
- In the URL box, enter %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS and press Enter.
- Right-click the Logs folder
click Share
Zip.
- Send the Logs.zip file to your support agent.
Analyze log files yourself
After you capture the log files, you can use the Log Analyzer 2 tool to diagnose your Drive for desktop problems.
- Open the Log Analyzer 2 .
- Click Autodetect
Drive for desktop
Choose file.
- Unzip and upload the file.
- Click Analyze.
- (Optional) To look for other issues, you can also try analyzing existing log files, such as drive_fs.txt or drive_fs_1.txt.
Capture fine Drive for desktop logs for support
You should gather fine logs only if Google Workspace support has explicitly requested them. Fine logging produces a large amount of data that can overwrite useful debugging information if left active for long.
Gather fine logs from the product
- On your computer, click Drive for desktop
.
- On Apple Mac, Drive for desktop is on the menu bar at the top right.
- On Microsoft Windows, Drive for desktop is on the taskbar at the bottom right.
- Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings
.
- Click Enable verbose logging.
- Click Drive for desktop
again.
- Reproduce the issue as quickly as possible and note the time the issue occurred.
- Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings
.
- Click Generate Diagnostic Info.
You’ll get a notification when the ZIP file is added to your desktop. - Press and hold the Shift key and click Settings
.
- Click Disable verbose logging.
- Send the ZIP file to your support agent.
Gather fine logs from the command line
If you can't access the Drive for desktop application, you can capture log files using Finder in Mac and File Explorer in Windows.
On a Mac
- Go to /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and open the Terminal app.
- Make sure that Drive for desktop is not running. Check the right side of the menu bar and confirm that the Google Drive icon is not there.
- At the prompt in the Terminal app, enter the following command:
/Applications/Google\ Drive.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Drive --module_log_level="*:LOG_FINE" - Reproduce the issue as quickly as possible and note the time the issue occurred.
- Follow the steps in Capture log files when the application is not available (above on this page).
On Windows
- Make sure that Drive for desktop is not running. Check the right side of the task bar and confirm that the Google Drive icon is not there.
- Note the version of Drive for desktop that’s installed. If you don’t know, open Explorer and go to C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\ . The folder that starts with the highest number is the version you installed.
- Open a command prompt:
- Press Windows+r.
- Click Run
enter cmd
press Enter.
- At the command prompt, enter the following command and replace X.X.X.X with your Drive for desktop version from step 2:
"C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\X.X.X.X\GoogleDriveFS.exe" --module_log_level="*:LOG_FINE” - Reproduce the issue as quickly as possible and note the time when the issue occurred.
- Follow the steps in Capture log files when the application is not available (above on this page).
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