MultiDrive: Manage Multiple Google Drive Accounts from One Dashboard

Managing multiple Google Drive accounts can be frustrating. Whether you have separate accounts for personal files, work, projects, or backups, switching between accounts and checking storage manually takes time.

To solve this problem, I built MultiDrive — a web application that lets users connect and manage multiple Google Drive accounts from one dashboard.

The goal is simple: one place to view and manage your cloud storage accounts.

Why I Built MultiDrive

Like many people, I found myself using multiple cloud storage accounts for different purposes. Google Drive makes it easy to store files, but managing several accounts means constantly switching between them.

I wanted a simpler experience where I could connect multiple accounts and quickly see important information such as:

• How much storage each account has
• How much storage is being used
• Google Drive usage
• Trash usage
• Storage usage percentage

That's where the idea for MultiDrive came from.

MultiDrive Features
Connect Multiple Google Drive Accounts

The main feature of MultiDrive is the ability to connect multiple Google accounts using Google OAuth 2.0.

Each connected Google account is handled separately, allowing users to manage multiple Google Drive connections from a single application.

Google Drive Storage Dashboard

MultiDrive uses the Google Drive API to retrieve storage information for each connected account.

The dashboard displays:

• Total storage capacity
• Used storage
• Storage usage percentage
• Google Drive storage usage
• Trash storage usage

Each account has its own storage card, making it easy to compare storage across multiple Google Drive accounts.

Automatic GB and TB Storage Formatting

Storage information is returned by the Google Drive API in bytes, so MultiDrive automatically converts the values into readable units.

For example:

Smaller storage amounts are displayed in GB
Larger storage amounts are automatically displayed in TB

This makes the dashboard easier to read without manually calculating storage values.

Connected Account Sidebar

All connected Google Drive accounts are listed in the sidebar using their email addresses. This provides a quick overview of every account connected to MultiDrive.

Technologies Used

I built MultiDrive using a simple JavaScript-based stack:

• HTML for the application structure
• CSS for the dashboard interface
• JavaScript for frontend functionality
• Node.js for the backend
• Express.js for API routes
• Google OAuth 2.0 for authentication
• Google Drive API for accessing storage information

The backend handles the OAuth flow and communicates with the Google Drive API, while the frontend displays the information in a unified dashboard.

Connecting to the Google Drive API

One of the most important parts of the project was implementing Google OAuth.

The authentication flow works like this:

• The user clicks Add Google Account
• MultiDrive redirects the user to Google authentication
• The user grants permission to access Google Drive
• Google redirects the user back to the application
• The application receives an access token
• MultiDrive uses the token to retrieve Google Drive information

This approach makes it possible to connect multiple Google accounts independently.

A Problem I Faced While Building It

During development, I encountered a situation where Google authentication was successful, but requests to the Google Drive API failed.

The issue was that the Google Drive API was not enabled for the Google Cloud project associated with my OAuth credentials.

It was an interesting lesson because OAuth authentication and API access are two separate parts of the setup.

Successfully logging in with Google does not automatically mean that every Google API is enabled for your project.

After enabling the Google Drive API in the correct Google Cloud project, the storage requests started working correctly.

What's Next for MultiDrive?

Google Drive support is the first step. My long-term goal is to turn MultiDrive into a unified cloud storage management platform.

Some features I plan to explore include:
Browse Google Drive files and folderslll

• Search files across connected accounts
• Upload files
• Transfer files between cloud accounts
• Dropbox integration
• Microsoft OneDrive integration
• Combined storage analytics The idea is to eventually allow users to manage different cloud storage services without constantly switching between multiple websites.

Final Thoughts

Building MultiDrive has been a great project for learning about JavaScript, Node.js, OAuth authentication, REST APIs, and cloud storage management.

The project solves a simple problem: managing multiple Google Drive accounts should be easier.

The current version focuses on connecting multiple Google accounts and displaying their storage information in one dashboard, but I see a lot of potential for expanding it into a more complete multi-cloud storage manager.

I'd love to hear your feedback!