The usual way to sync files across devices is to install an app, log in with your main account password, and let it run. It works, and it quietly creates a problem: every machine that ever held that password is now a machine that can reach everything, including the laptop you sold, the phone you replaced, and the desktop at an office you no longer work in.
Device access to Drive works differently. Each device gets its own credential, each one can be revoked or rotated on its own, and none of them is your account password. This page covers how that's set up, why per-device credentials matter more than they sound, and what the sync does and doesn't do.
Why Per-Device Credentials Change the Picture
A shared password is a single point of failure that grows every time you add a machine, and it is the default way most tools sync files across devices.
Change it and every device stops working at once, which is why people don't change it. Lose a laptop and the only remedy is changing the password everywhere, so the response to a minor incident is a major inconvenience — and that friction is exactly why the response often doesn't happen at all.
Per-device credentials remove the dilemma. The stolen laptop's access is revoked in one action, every other device keeps working, and nothing else needs touching. When you sync files across devices this way, decommissioning a machine becomes a thirty-second job rather than an afternoon.
That is the practical case for per-device credentials whenever you sync files across devices. Rotation works the same way. A credential can be replaced on one device without disturbing the others, which makes periodic rotation something you might actually do.
How to Sync Files Across Devices Here
The mechanism is WebDAV, an IETF standard rather than an app we ask you to install. That has two consequences worth knowing up front.
The good one: it's built into every desktop operating system and supported by plenty of mobile file managers, so there's nothing proprietary to maintain and nothing that stops working when a vendor loses interest. Windows maps it as a network location, macOS connects to it from Finder, Linux mounts it, and it appears as a normal drive.
The honest one: WebDAV mounts a remote drive rather than keeping a local mirror. Files open from the server, which means they're always current and no disk space is consumed, but it also means no offline access to anything you haven't opened. If your requirement is working on a plane, a mounted drive is the wrong tool and a proper sync client is the right one.
The setup itself is short: create a device credential in the dashboard, then connect using the server address and that credential. The detail is in the WebDAV guide.
The Jobs a Mount Handles Well
Being specific about the fit saves disappointment later, because "sync files across devices" covers several different wishes and a mount serves some of them far better than others.
Large archives you need occasionally. Material too big to keep on a laptop, reachable as though it were local. This is where a mounted drive beats sync outright, because sync would demand the disk space and the mount doesn't.
Shared reference material. Files several people read and few people change — templates, brand assets, documentation. Everyone sees the current version because there's only one version.
Scripted access. A backup job or a build process writing to a mounted path, using a credential that exists only on that machine and nowhere near anyone's laptop.
Phones that shouldn't hold everything. A device credential on a phone can be revoked the moment it's lost, without touching the account it belongs to.
Where a Real Sync Client Wins
If you need genuine two-way sync with conflict resolution, offline editing and background upload, Dropbox and its equivalents do that properly and this doesn't pretend to. A mount is not a sync engine.
Collaborative editing is the other gap. Two people opening the same document over a mount will produce the outcome you'd expect, which is one of them overwriting the other. Files that several people edit simultaneously belong in a tool built for it.
So the honest framing is that this covers the majority of what people mean when they say they want to sync files across devices — reach the same files from everywhere, without duplicating them — and doesn't cover the collaborative-editing case at all.
Keeping It Tidy
A few habits keep per-device access useful rather than becoming its own mess.
Whatever you use it for, the credentials are the part worth keeping disciplined.
- Name credentials after the machine. "MacBook", "office desktop", "backup runner". A list of unnamed credentials is a list you'll never dare prune.
- One per device, never shared between two. Sharing one across machines rebuilds the problem you were avoiding.
- Revoke at disposal, not later. The moment a machine leaves your control, before it's wiped and before it's sold.
- Review the list twice a year. Anything you can't identify should be revoked, because a credential you can't place is a credential you aren't controlling.
Connecting on Each Platform
Because this is a standard rather than an app, the steps to sync files across devices differ slightly by operating system, and each has one quirk worth knowing before you start.
Windows maps it as a network location from File Explorer. The quirk is that Windows imposes a conservative size limit on files transferred over WebDAV by default, which manifests as large files refusing to copy for no stated reason. It's a registry value and it's raised once per machine.
macOS connects from Finder's Connect to Server. It works well, with one habit worth acquiring: macOS writes hidden metadata files into directories it browses, which is harmless but litters shared folders that other people also use.
Linux mounts it through the desktop file manager or from the command line, and behaves the most predictably of the three. This is usually the right home for any scripted job.
Phones and tablets need a file manager that speaks the protocol, since neither iOS nor Android includes one by default. Several good ones exist on both, and this is where a revocable per-device credential matters most, because phones are the devices that actually get lost.
How It Feels in Use
Setting expectations here prevents the most common disappointment, which is expecting a mount used to sync files across devices to behave like a local disk.
Opening and saving are network operations. A large file opens at the speed of your connection rather than instantly, and an application that saves continuously will feel slower than it does locally. For documents, images and archives this is unnoticeable; for editing video directly off the mount it will be painful, and the right pattern there is copying down, working locally, and copying back.
Directory listings with very many files in a single folder are the other thing to watch. Splitting a folder of ten thousand files into a sensible hierarchy improves matters considerably, and is worth doing when you first organize the storage rather than after it becomes annoying.
None of this is specific to us — it's what mounting remote storage over HTTP means, and any provider's WebDAV behaves the same way when you sync files across devices this way.
Storage and Structure
Drive attaches to the same account as your mail, starting at 250 GB for $3.20 a month and running to 100 TB on a slider, so the drive you mount and the mailbox you read are one subscription rather than two.
Space can be pooled across the account or allocated per mailbox, which matters when several people mount the same storage — one person's archive shouldn't be able to consume everyone else's room. Folders can also be shared with another account entirely, so a contractor can mount exactly one folder and nothing else, covered in how sharing works.
The underlying idea is small but it compounds: when you sync files across devices, the credential should belong to the device rather than to you. Then losing hardware is an inconvenience for that hardware alone, instead of an event that touches everything you own.
