Suppress conversion of native formats to xlsx, docx, etc on Linux

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I am using rclone on Linux to mount my Google Drive, and spreadsheets there show up as xlsx files here -- I'd like to supress that, and have it work like the native Google Drive on macOS, which has gsheet files.

I think I've lost some data because of this -- I opened the xlsx file in Libreoffice on Linux, and somehow it didn't get saved and converted back to the native Google Sheets format.

I want my Google Drive spreadsheets (and documents, but I have fewer of those) and actual, real Excel spreadsheet files to always be distinguishable.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

% rclone version                                                                 rclone v1.74.1
- os/version: ubuntu 26.04 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 7.0.0-27-generic (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.26.3
- go/linking: static
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone mount my-google-drive: \
    /path/to/mountpoint \
    --vfs-cache-mode full \
    --vfs-cache-max-size 50G \
    --vfs-cache-max-age 720h \
    --vfs-read-chunk-size 32M \
    --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit 1G \
    --vfs-read-ahead 128M \
    --buffer-size 32M \
    --dir-cache-time 1000h \
    --poll-interval 15s \
    --attr-timeout 1s \
    --transfers 8 \
    --drive-chunk-size 64M \
    --drive-pacer-min-sleep 10ms \
    --drive-pacer-burst 200 \
    --log-level INFO --log-file ~/.cache/rclone/mount.log \
    --daemon
Paste command here

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

[google-drive-my.name]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive = 

[google-drive-work1]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive = 

[google-drive-work2]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive = 

[iclouddrive]
type = iclouddrive
apple_id = XXX
password = XXX
_auth_session = 
cookies = XXX
trust_token = XXX
service = drive

[icloudphotos]
type = iclouddrive
service = photos
apple_id = XXX
password = XXX
_auth_session = 
cookies = XXX
trust_token = XXX

[proton]
type = protondrive
username = dandrake235
password = XXX
2fa = 6 digit number
client_uid = 
client_access_token = 
client_refresh_token = 
client_salted_key_pass = 
### Double check the config for sensitive info before posting publicly

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

I don't have a log, but the relevant thing is the actual files I see on my filesystem. Here's what I see on Linux:

me@linux-machine ~ % ls /path/Public/rclone-demo
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me  0 Jul  3 07:23 'Untitled document.docx'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me  0 Jul  3 07:24 'Untitled presentation.pptx'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me  0 Jul  3 07:23 'Untitled spreadsheet.xlsx'

And on a macbook:

me@macos-machine /another/path/Public/rclone-demo % ls
total 0
-rw-------@ 1 me  staff  177 Jul  3 07:23 Untitled document.gdoc
-rw-------@ 1 me  staff  177 Jul  3 07:24 Untitled presentation.gslides
-rw-------@ 1 me  staff  177 Jul  3 07:24 Untitled spreadsheet.gsheet

On macOS, the 177 bytes are a snippet of JSON with the id and such.

I'd like rclone to also show the gdoc, gslides, and gsheet files so that things match the native Google Drive client.

Is this possible?

2

A partial solution: use --drive-export-formats desktop -- that makes rclone show those files (on Linux) as XDG .desktop files that contain a URL. Now, at least, the file names aren't deceptive:

me@linux-machine /path/to/Public % ls rclone-demo                                                                                     
total 19
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan  200 Jul  4 05:55 'A google slides file.desktop'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan  230 Jul  4 05:55 'A test Google document for my post to the rclone discourse.desktop'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan  197 Jul  4 05:55 'Google spreadsheet.desktop'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan 5115 Jul  4 05:58  genuine_docx_file.docx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan 9011 Jul  4 05:58  genuine_odt_file.odt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan 5624 Jul  4 06:02  genuine_xlsx_file.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dan dan  187 Jul  4 06:18  name_clash_test.desktop

However, as you see, this does not handle name clashes. If you have a document and a spreadsheet with the same base name, rclone only shows you one -- see the actual Google Drive folder. This seems like a bug.

This is in the rclone documentation for Google Drive, though what I'd really like is just the native client behavior, or something close -- just give me gdoc, gsheet and so on for the file extensions.

3

welcome to the forum,

which third-party applications offer that exact functionality?