Frequently Asked Questions
G2D is a handy tool aka Google Drive Direct Link Generator, allows you to quickly convert your Google Drive shareable link into direct link.
Direct link is a link that actually refers to some digital asset like an image, document or video etc. When direct link is followed, it download the referred file instead of opening a web page.
Direct link can be extremely beneficial for a website admins for simple use cases. A website admin can save cost by using google drive direct links on their website instead of purchasing expensive storage services like amazon s3, google cloud storage and other CDN. This also allows website admin to avoid managing of complex network infrastructure while providing similar user experience to the end user.
Step 1: Goto Google Drive and right click the file that you want to share, then click on ‘Get link’.
Step 2: From the presented pop up change the visibility to ‘Anyone with the link’.
Step 3: Click on ‘Copy link’.
Step 1: Goto G2D.
Step 2: Paste the copied shareable url in the given field and click on Create Direct Link button.
Step 3: Direct link will be generated and shown below the field. Click to copy the generated direct link. That’s it!
There are few limitations that you need to keep in mind while generating direct links.
If you want to make your link publicly downloadable make sure your file's visibility is set to Anyone with the link otherwise only allowed people can download the file.
The direct link only work with uploaded files on Google Drive. It does not work for documents created with Google Docs.
For larger files direct link may open a warning page that Google cannot scan this file for viruses because of its large size. However user can continue downloading after acknowledgement.
Yes! it's absolutely free and always will be.
No! It does not require any attribution. You are free to use this tool.
G2D manipulate file id from the given url, in order to make the direct link.
No! it does not require user account to use it.