Google Drive MCP

Google Drive MCP gives your AI coding agent two tools for finding files and one admin tool for organising and sharing them, so you can ask for a file by name or by what it says. It is free, it runs as a VS Code extension, and it talks to your own Google account.

There is no server to host and no config file to edit. You install the extension, sign in to Google once, and the Drive tools appear in every agent it finds on your machine: VS Code Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini, Windsurf, Continue.dev, and Cline.

What you can ask

  • “Show me the files in my Drive”
  • “Find the Q4 report”
  • “What is in the Contracts folder?”
  • “Create a folder called Launch and move the brief into it”
  • “Who can see the pricing sheet?”
  • “Share the roadmap with the design team as view only”

The two Google Drive MCP tools

Tool What it does
drive_list List the files in your Drive or in one folder
drive_search Search files by name or by content

Both are read tools. They return file names, types, and IDs, which the agent then uses for whatever you ask next.

The Drive admin tool

Anything that changes a file or who can open it goes through one admin tool with named actions.

Action What it does
create_folder Create a new folder
move, copy, rename Reorganise files
delete Delete a file (needs confirmation)
share, unshare Give or remove access
get_permissions Show who has access now

Deleting a file needs explicit confirmation

The delete action only runs with confirm: true. The agent is told this up front, so it has to ask you before it removes anything. Listing, searching, and checking permissions do not need it.

Reading what is inside a file

The Drive tools find files; they do not open them. For the contents, the same extension has docs_read for Google Docs and sheets_read for Google Sheets. A typical exchange is “find the project proposal” followed by “read it”, and the agent chains the two tools itself.

Connecting your Google account

A setup wizard opens the first time you launch the extension. Most people pick OAuth.

  1. Create a project in the Google Cloud Console, or pick one you already have.
  2. Enable the Google Drive API under APIs and Services.
  3. Create an OAuth client ID of type Desktop app.
  4. Paste the client ID and secret into the wizard.
  5. Sign in to Google in the browser window that opens, and authorize.

Developers who already use the gcloud CLI can use Application Default Credentials instead, and Workspace admins can use a service account key.

Common questions

Does it cover other Google services?

Yes. The same install also gives you the Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, and Sheets tools.

Does it work with shared files?

The tools see what your signed-in Google account can see, so files shared with you turn up in searches the same way they do in Drive.

Install it

Google Drive MCP is free and MIT licensed. In the extension stores it is listed as Google Workspace MCP, the package that carries the Drive tools.

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