Listing shared drives in Google Drive

Question

I'd like to list the Google Drive shared drives under my account. I'm using their Drives: list API to do so. Running it in the console succeeds but gives me an empty list of drives, and I can't find any clues as to why.

I looked at their docs for implementing shared drive support but none of it's relevant to listing drives.

Things I've checked:

• I'm logged into the account I think I am. I used the about API to confirm.
• I've granted the requisite scope to the console app ("Google APIs Explorer" has scope "View and manage metadata of files in your Google Drive")
• I have a folder shared with me -- under "Shared with me" in google drive I see the folder. Its details list its type as Google Drive Folder. It is owned by someone else but I have permission to add/delete files there.

Answer 1

Don't confuse shared drives with shared folders

• A shared drive is something that is being created from the UI by clicking on Shared drives-> New shared drive... or programmaticaly with Drives:Create
• A shared folder is a folder that is either on a user's private drive or a shared drive where you are not a member and only a specific folder (rather than the whole drive) has been shared with you by changing the sharing permissions.

Conclusion: You cannot retrieve folders that have been shread with you with the Drives:list method.

To retrieve folders that have been shared with you, you need to

• use the method Files:list
• set includeItemsFromAllDrives and supportsAllDrives to true
• You can set the q parameter to mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder' to narrow down results.