Google account is connected, but I see "Access denied to ." in Dolphin for GDrive

Under Bazzite System Settings > Online Accounts, I've added my gmail and it looks correctly connected. However under Dolphin > Network > Google I see "Access denied to ." when I click my connected Google account.

Is there a known permission / API key issue here I can address?

Pandabrain•3/17/25, 9:00 PM

As far as i know, Google is actively blocking KDE from accessing their API. I have not tried it, but according to this forum post, spoofing the client id of GNOME should help. Have not tried it myself though, as I rather move away from google instead.
https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-online-accounts-not-signing-in/3411/38

KDE Discuss

KDE Online Accounts - Not Signing In

1 There is a problem that has been reported by users of Arch and derived distributions. Before entering the password, the user goes to a screen that says: This browser or app is not secure. This problem is in a patch called fake-user-agent.patch in the signon-ui package. It is not a Plasma problem, but I had not found information about the caus...

jollinsOP•3/18/25, 12:29 AM

Thanks for digging that up. I also don't want to modify files in /usr/share/ ... I may make do without google here. (also won't the OS not let me due to this being part of the system image?)

Pandabrain•3/18/25, 3:15 AM

A comment further down explains how to overwrite that https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-online-accounts-not-signing-in/3411/50

Instead of editing a package-owned file in /usr, you can instead copy it to ~/.local/share/accounts/providers/google.provider, and edit the ClientId/ClientSecret there. It will override the one from /usr. This should work on immutable distros. It also won’t break next time the package in question is updated and overwrites things in /usr.

Note that this will also override updates being done to that file when kde updates that file.

Pandabrain•3/18/25, 4:14 AM

i tried it myself (TLDR: it didn't work, it's a a problem with KDE and the google API). I gained some understanding of the problem though: The google.provider file shows that kde doesn't even ask for permissions to access the drive. Using the above mentioned method of overriding it, i added the scope for drive access. For the new scope to take effect, you must add the google account again. however, this time, after entering my 2FA, i got the message that the app is blocked. Conclusion: Google wont allow the KDE client id to use drive access. However, using the GNOME ID and secret also didn't work, it too says it is being blocked.

Near the end of the discussion i linked, some KDE devs explain that google added some bureaucracy and apparently no one seems to be interested enough to go through all the documentation and what not in order for google to allow KDE again. Maybe when the new Steam OS goes public there will be enough interest for someone to fix this?

Pandabrain•3/18/25, 4:45 AM

Got it working now by creating my own client id on google: https://developers.google.com/identity/oauth2/web/guides/get-google-api-clientid (and activate the google drive api library here: https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library)
with this, i got a warning that google has not verified my app, but you can continue.
PM or ping me if you need help setting it up.

Jetman•6/7/25, 8:41 AM

3 months later still broken? Are there any other ways to access Google drive? I've tried to get rclone and some other apps via flatpak but nothing works.

Lyn•7/13/25, 3:57 PM

Same issue here, also haven't been able to get it to work even with the custom ID thing

Makzimus•11/29/25, 11:19 PM

@PandabrainPinging you for help! No idea how to modify the credentials (read-only fs and all that..)

Pandabrain•11/29/25, 11:24 PM

you mean because you can't edit the google.provider file in /usr/...?

Makzimus•11/29/25, 11:25 PM

That's right

Pandabrain•11/29/25, 11:25 PM

just copy that file to
~/.local/share/accounts/providers/google.provider
it will automatically use that instead of the file in the /usr folder

Pandabrain•11/29/25, 11:26 PM

maybe a reboot is needed, i don't really remember

Makzimus•11/29/25, 11:28 PM

Nice. Sounds much eaiser than all the junk I was reading about doing my own ostree deployment :kekw:

JJetman 3 months later still broken? Are there any other ways to access Google drive? I'...

Dmarinas3283•11/30/25, 1:50 AM

You can use the Expandrive App Image

Google account is connected, but I see "Access denied to ." in Dolphin for GDrive

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