Why Use Selective Sync in Google Drive?
If you use the “Google Drive for Desktop” application to mirror files to your local hard drive, you might eventually run into storage issues. If your cloud Drive contains 500GB of company archives and high-resolution videos, but your laptop only has a 256GB solid-state drive, syncing everything will immediately crash your computer.
To prevent this, you must stop Google Drive from blindly downloading the entire cloud directory. Instead, you need to use “Selective Sync” to force the app to only download specific, essential folders, leaving the heavy archives safely stored exclusively in the cloud.
How to Stop Syncing Specific Folders
You can manage which folders are mirrored to your hard drive directly from the Google Drive desktop app preferences.
- Click the Google Drive icon in your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (Mac).
- Click the Settings gear icon in the top-right corner of the popup panel.
- Select Preferences from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar of the Preferences window, click on Google Drive (the folder icon).
- Under the “My Drive syncing options” section, you will see two main choices: “Stream files” and “Mirror files.” Ensure you have Mirror files selected if you want offline access.
- Below that, click on the option to Change folder selection (or “Select folders” depending on your app version).
- A window will appear listing all the folders currently in your cloud Drive.
- Uncheck the boxes next to any large or unnecessary folders that you do not want taking up space on your local hard drive.
- Click OK, then click Save.
Google Drive will immediately delete the local copies of the un-checked folders from your computer, freeing up hard drive space. (Do not panic: deleting the local sync copy in this manner does not delete the files from the cloud).