How Does Google Drive File Stream Know it's Me?

So yah - how does File Stream know to use your Google Drive?

Well, when it runs for the first time, Google Drive File Stream asks a G-Suite user to sign in.

The act of signing-in is the process by which File Stream is then authorized to access to the user’s Google Drive.

Once authenticated, File Stream will present a redirected drive with a My Drive folder labeled G: in Windows; it’ll be represented as a device within the Mac O/S.

The My Drive folder is the root of the user’s Google Drive and - generally - the content placed in My Drive is private to the user.

Where G-Suite Basic users will only see their own My Drive folder, G-Suite Business users would see their My Drive folder and their G-Suite domain’s Shared Drives (formerly known as Team Drives). Only the G-Suite Business license has access to Shared Drives.

When File Stream is active, it creates a runtime stub that appears in the system tray of a Windows computer; a small white and gray triangle near the computer’s clock displayed in the lower right side of the screen. On a Mac, File Stream’s runtime stub appears in the upper toolbar towards the right.

In both cases, the stub will look grayed-out if the user needs to sign in. Clicking on the stub will produce a login challenge that will re-authenticate File Stream. If the stub is blue then the user is currently logged-in.

The user’s credential is cached in the form of an oAuth token and is active for a period of time or until the token is revoked. Then the user would have to sign back in again. If the user rotates their G-Suite password, they would need to sign-in again to create a new oAuth token.

While logged in, the computer user has access to the Google Drive of the signed-in G-Suite user.

Hopefully they’re the same person! The person using the computer is using their account with File Stream and that login information is stored behind the Windows or Mac user account.

If not, the user will notice that the File Stream stub has an option to “switch user” or “disconnect” to reconnect File Stream under another user account.

File Stream cannot connect to multiple user accounts or Google Drives at one time.