Nautilus link to Google docs won't open files

Question

I would like to sync my files with Google docs as described in the answer Is there a Google Drive client available? here.

Which worked, I can see my files.

But I cannot launch them. It seems Nautilus doesn't know which app to associate to the links. I tried associating the files to Chrome but that didn't work.

The links are in this form,

file:///run/user/1000/gvfs/google-drive:host=someplace.com,user=some.place/1994pQkFEF-tcvTMzQWxK4T1ayNEsO22T/5G0KUbR2345ulSg-NOFHQArcPd5KWAe66/4hvj2Wvi9gh1UZFDNQBy8UmbcZB-44LByYVnpQgV6OWM

Files that are non-google-doc type, for example PDFs, do open from Nautilus from my google docs drive account.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 14 '18 at 14:38

Indeed, you cannot launch specific Google doc documents, spreadsheets or presentations. You must open these in Google Docs. In Google Docs, one can convert from the google doc format to LibreOffice or Microsoft formats. In that case, the documents become "regular" files which you will be able to launch in their associated application.

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered May 27 '20 at 03:33

Install this as /usr/share/applications/google-docs.desktop. It's based on guesswork and observations so YMMV ...

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Google Docs
Exec=sh -c "xdg-open https://docs.google.com/document/d/$(basename %f)/edit"
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=application/vnd.google-apps.document

Nautilus link to Google docs won't open files

2 Answers2