# Reported issues for Google Drive MCP

Pod holds 23 of 29 problems reported by people outside the maintainer team. Issues filed by the project's own owners, members and collaborators are excluded entirely — a maintainer's release checklist is not a warning to a prospective user.

Back to [Google Drive MCP](/mcp/google-drive-mcp).

## Most discussed

### Design proposal: optional OAuth 2.1 authorization server for team / multi-user deployments

Opening this as a design proposal rather than a PR, because the changes are large and opinionated. Happy to break it into pieces if any of it sounds interesting to land upstream.

## Context

Over at RS we deploy this server on Cloud Run behind \`https://drive-mcp.relevantsearch.com\` and expose it to our team via the claude.ai custom-connector flow. The current server supports single-user auth (local OAuth with tokens on disk, or stdio mode with env-var credentials) — both of those break down w

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/109) · 2026-04-22 · closed · external user · 5 comments

### readGoogleDoc / getGoogleDocContent only returns first tab

## Problem

`listDocumentTabs` correctly lists all tabs in a multi-tab Google Doc, but
`readGoogleDoc` and `getGoogleDocContent` only return the content of the
first (default) tab. Content from additional tabs is silently ignored.

## Expected behavior

There should be a way to read content from any tab, e.g. by accepting an
optional `tabId` parameter (as returned by `listDocumentTabs`).

## Context

The Google Docs API requires setting `includeTabsContent=true` and iterating
over `document.tabs

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/47) · 2026-02-24 · closed · external user · 1 comment

### Request to add capability to Insert Inline Images

One function would love is adding capability to insert inline images to Google Docs
Will be useful for us to prepare Support KT Documents.
Request: Can be on the lines of

google-docs-insertInlineImage(documentId, imageUrl, index, widthPt?, heightPt?)
A convenience wrapper that internally calls batchUpdate with insertInlineImage

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/31) · 2026-02-23 · closed · external user · 2 comments

### Create internal documentation for colleagues to enable this MCP

## Goal

Create setup instructions so colleagues can enable the Google Drive MCP server in their Claude Code environments.

Should cover:
- Prerequisites (GCP project, OAuth credentials)
- Installation and build steps
- OAuth authentication flow
- Claude Code MCP configuration (`~/.claude.json`)
- Available tools overview
- Troubleshooting common issues (esbuild path resolution, token refresh, etc.)

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/27) · 2026-02-08 · closed · outside contributor · 1 comment

### Add downloadFile tool for streaming Drive files to disk

## Problem

The MCP server has `uploadFile` (local → Drive) but no reverse operation. Reading Drive files through MCP loads content into the LLM context window — impractical for large files.

## Solution

Add a `downloadFile` tool that streams Google Drive files directly to the local filesystem using `pipeline()` from `stream/promises` for proper backpressure.

### Features
- Google Workspace files (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings) are exported to configurable formats
- Regular files are download

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/26) · 2026-02-08 · closed · outside contributor · 1 comment

### Invalid JSON Schema: "optional" keyword breaks Claude Code API integration

The tool input schemas use "optional": true on properties, which is not a valid JSON Schema keyword. This causes Claude Code (and likely other MCP clients using the Anthropic API) to reject the tools with an invalid_request_error.
Error Message
API Error: 400 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"invalid_request_error","message":"tools.51.custom.input_schema: JSON schema is invalid. It must match JSON Schema draft 2020-12 (https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12). Learn more about tool use at https://d

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/10) · 2025-12-31 · closed · external user · 2 comments

### listFolder returns empty for Shared Drive folders (missing   supportsAllDrives parameter)

When using `listFolder` on a Google Shared Drive folder, the response
  returns empty even though the folder contains files. Search functionality
  works correctly and finds files in Shared Drives.

  **Environment:**
  - MCP Server: `@piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp`
  - Client: Claude Code
  - Google Workspace account with Shared Drives enabled
  - OAuth app set to "Trusted" in Google Workspace Admin Console

  **Steps to Reproduce:**
  1. Get a folder ID from a Google Shared Drive
  2. Call `lis

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/7) · 2025-12-12 · closed · external user · 7 comments

### Search tool limited to 10 results, no pagination support

## Description
The search tool is hardcoded to return a maximum of 10 results with no pagination support.

## Issue Details
In `src/index.ts`, the search function uses:
```javascript
pageSize: 10,
```

This is hardcoded and cannot be overridden by the user. Additionally, there is no mechanism to fetch subsequent pages of results using `pageToken` from the Google Drive API.

## Impact
Users cannot retrieve search results beyond the first 10 matches, making it impossible to find all files matching

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/1) · 2025-10-23 · closed · external user · 3 comments

## Most recent

### Token refresh is unbounded — a stalled refresh hangs every subsequent call on the server

`AccountClientFactory.refreshIfNeeded()` awaits `client.refreshAccessToken()` with no timeout, abort or retry. If the token endpoint stalls, the await never settles — and because `inflightRefresh` dedupes, every subsequent call awaits the same pending promise, so the whole server appears dead until it eventually resolves.

`src/auth/accountClientFactory.ts`:

```js
const { credentials } = await client.refreshAccessToken();
```

Two things make it hard to diagnose. `REFRESH_BUFFER_MS` fires the r

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/169) · 2026-08-16 · open · external user · 0 comments

### manage_accounts add keeps stale OAuth client after reauthentication

## Problem

After reauthenticating an existing account with `manage_accounts add`, the stored account details update, but Drive calls can keep using the old revoked OAuth client until the MCP server restarts.

## Simple example

1. Start the server and use account `work`.
2. Revoke its Google grant.
3. Run `manage_accounts add work` and complete the login.
4. Run a Drive call with `account: "work"`.

Expected: the call uses the new token.

Actual: the server says the authorization was revoked or

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/168) · 2026-08-15 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### search tool doesn't support orderBy — results come back unsorted, error-prone for "most recent" queries

## Summary

The `search` tool's `files.list()` call (`src/tools/drive.ts`, in the `case "search":` handler) does not pass an `orderBy` parameter, so results come back in Google Drive's default order rather than sorted by modification/creation time.

Notably, `listFolder` right below it in the same file already passes `orderBy: "name"` to the same API — the codebase clearly knows how to do this, it's just not wired into `search`.

## Why this matters

For a query like "what have I modified recent

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/167) · 2026-08-11 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### OAuth token refresh fails on Node 24 with "Premature close" (gaxios 6 / node-fetch 2)

### Problem Description
  
    When running `@piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp` under **Node.js 24** (e.g., v24.17.0), authenticating or refreshing OAuth tokens fails with the following error:
  
    ```text
    Authentication Failed
    Invalid response body while trying to fetch https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token: Premature close
  
  ### Root Cause
  
  The package specifies google-auth-library@^9.15.0 and googleapis@^144, which resolve to gaxios@6.7.1 -> node-fetch@2.7.0. Under Node 24 runtime,

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/166) · 2026-08-09 · open · external user · 0 comments

### readGoogleDoc format:"markdown" returns plain text — headings, bold/italic, bullets and tables are not converted

## Summary

`readGoogleDoc` / `readGoogleDocPaginated` accept `format: "markdown"`, but the output is effectively plain text — paragraph and character formatting is dropped. Headings, bold/italic, list bullets, and table structure all come back unstyled. Only inline images are actually rendered as markdown.

The practical impact is that a **read-as-markdown → edit → write-back** round trip silently flattens the document: every heading becomes body text, and there is no error or warning to indica

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/160) · 2026-07-18 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments

### Shared Drives invisible & search returns 0 results (incl. My Drive) on 2.2.0 despite full auth/drive scope

## Summary

On `2.2.0` (the current latest), the server cannot see any Shared Drive content **and** `search` returns zero results even for My Drive, despite the OAuth token holding the full `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive` scope and the same Google account being able to reach the files fine via the Drive REST API directly. There's no auth error — operations just come back empty / "file not found." So this looks broader than the usual "missing `supportsAllDrives`" Shared-Drive gap.

## Env

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/137) · 2026-06-24 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Feature request: create/convert a Doc from in-memory content (not only a server-local path)

First off, thanks for this server — the breadth of the Drive/Docs/Sheets/Slides surface is excellent, and we're running v2.2.0 in production. I use it with the Claude Managed Agents platform because the built-in MCP GDrive server is way too limited.

### What I'm trying to do
Create a nicely-formatted Google Doc from an MCP client that talks to the server *remotely* over HTTP (in our case an Anthropic Managed Agent — no shared filesystem with the server).

### The gap
The clean way to get a full

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/136) · 2026-06-14 · closed · external user · 1 comment

### readGoogleDoc and getGoogleDocContent drop embedded image content (no URL, no data)

Summary

When a Google Doc contains an inline image, both readGoogleDoc (any format) and getGoogleDocContent return a placeholder for the image but expose no way to access the underlying content. No URL, no base64, no drive-resource pointer. Any workflow that depends on the image (OCR, vision, attachment forwarding, intent extraction from a screenshot) is blocked.

Steps to reproduce
Create a Google Doc with one text paragraph and one inline image (any source: paste from clipboard, insert from D

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/132) · 2026-05-20 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### addPermission fails for type:anyone/domain — emailAddress incorrectly required and always sent

## Bug Description

`addPermission` unconditionally requires `emailAddress` and always passes it to the Google Drive REST API, even when `type` is `anyone` or `domain`. Drive rejects this with an error.

## Reproduction

```
Tool: mcp__google-drive__addPermission
Arguments:
  fileId: <any valid file ID>
  emailAddress: "anyone@anyone.com"   # forced by required field
  type: "anyone"
  role: "reader"
  sendNotificationEmail: false
```

**Result:**
```
The specified emailAddress is invalid or not

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/131) · 2026-05-17 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Need option to save tokens on large folder hierachy

Title:
Feature request: Add env var to disable MCP resources capability

Body:
## Summary

Add an environment variable (e.g. `GOOGLE_DRIVE_MCP_DISABLE_RESOURCES=1`) that, when set, causes the server to skip registering the MCP resources capability (`ListResourcesRequestSchema` and `ReadResourceRequestSchema` handlers) and omits `resources: {}` from the server capabilities block.

## Motivation

Some MCP clients / host environments either (1) enforce a tools-only policy, (2) perform poorly when `

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/115) · 2026-05-06 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Getting stuck loading on Gemini

It logs in succesfully, but afterwards is stuck initializing on Gemini (cli)

If I run it in the terminal and connect via URL, the logs say the following several times per second:

```
[2026-04-27T18:08:21.661Z] Handling ListResources request: {"params":{"cursor":"~!!~AI9FV7RjmAS3jO4I6HYjQcGAbgIzML93UWKbKfaKaQnrRKQqXaSI9UrOvZUJ1U4eKkqb0PV_QFON9xOvnGdXhXcPDik24FnqQ4xPWv318P9PlnxtUUaSTwNC_WVlcU0nK94_mGlHttbqGsgl-2IyYjW3NdXBs99MstN05rs3yb0xDEkm19UpU3iJjCmkucLgtfWyxwfJKdDngP3dOocMFZvFogPbzFQBXvFfU_P

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/111) · 2026-04-27 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Feature Request: Calendar Event attachments support

Google Calendar events can have file attachments, which the [API](https://developers.google.com/workspace/calendar/api/v3/reference/events) returns as the property `attachments[]`. It would be useful if this property was part of the `getCalendarEvent` tool response.

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/110) · 2026-04-23 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Add emailMessage support to addPermission and shareFile

## Summary

The Google Drive API supports an `emailMessage` parameter on `permissions.create` that lets you include a custom message in the sharing notification email. This is the same "Add a message" field users see in the Google Drive sharing UI.

Currently, `addPermission` and `shareFile` both call `permissions.create` but don't expose the `emailMessage` parameter. This means there's no way to include a custom note when sharing — the recipient just gets a generic "X shared a file with you" em

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/99) · 2026-04-18 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments

### multi account support

hello !

for example to connect to both a personal and a google workspace drive account

thanks !

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/97) · 2026-04-14 · closed · external user · 0 comments

### Support direct Google OAuth tokens

## Summary
Right now the auth flow appears to require a local OAuth setup (`gcp-oauth.keys.json`, local browser flow, local callback server, token persistence, etc.). It would be very helpful to support supplying Google OAuth credentials directly so an external service can handle the OAuth flow and this MCP server can simply consume the resulting token.

## Use case
A user may already have a separate web app, auth broker, or internal service that handles Google OAuth. In that setup, this MCP ser

[Read the thread](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues/75) · 2026-03-11 · closed · outside contributor · 0 comments

The remaining reports are on [the project's issue tracker](https://github.com/piotr-agier/google-drive-mcp/issues).