Support mounting drive (`google.colab.drive.mount`)

[ruzbeh13]

Feature Request: Add Google Drive Integration in Colab for VS Code

First, thank you for providing the official Colab extension for VS Code — it’s extremely useful and a great workflow improvement.

Problem

Currently, the extension does not provide a built-in way to access Google Drive when running a Colab kernel in VS Code.

In the classic Google Colab environment, users can mount Google Drive via:

from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')

However, this API is not available in the VS Code extension environment because the google.colab package is not included on the remote kernel, and the extension does not expose a corresponding UI for mounting or browsing Drive.

Requested Feature

Please add native Google Drive integration to the Colab for VS Code extension, similar to:

• A “Colab FS” panel showing:

  • Session FS
  • Drive (Google Drive)

• A button to Sign in with Google to grant Drive access

• Automatic mounting of Drive to a consistent path (e.g., /drive/MyDrive/)

• Full read/write access from Python code running on the Colab kernel

Why this is important

• Many Colab workflows rely on files stored in Google Drive.
• Users migrating from classic Colab to VS Code expect the same file accessibility.
• It significantly improves data handling for ML training, image datasets, notebooks, and large file workflows.
• Without this feature, users have no straightforward way to work with Drive in VS Code.

Additional notes

Even an initial minimal implementation (browse-only or read-only access) would greatly improve usability.
Thank you for considering this request!

[AI-Cortex]

I also ran into the same issue. Looking forward to seeing Drive integration added in Colab for VS Code — this would be extremely useful for workflows that rely on Google Drive.

[kevineger]

Thanks for the well structured feature request @ruzbeh13. We've been using #215 as the canonical issue for this, and other Colab tools that aren't yet supported. But given how popular the request to add Drive support is, I'll leave this issue up as the canonical Drive one, in hopes more folks ➕ it instead of filing a new issue.

Looking forward to seeing Drive integration

Us too! We're starting to work on it but it'll take a while to untangle some of our existing support which relies on functionality unique to the Colab web client.

[saserbest]

✚

[GinjaFam]

+++