What it is

What “connect reMarkable to Google Drive” actually means

Connect reMarkable to Google Drive isn’t a sync in the OneDrive-style sense. Most readers searching the phrase are imagining a folder that mirrors between their Drive and the reMarkable, the way OneDrive works on a Windows PC. That isn’t what reMarkable’s integration does. The Google Drive integration is a browse-and-import model: from the tablet, you can navigate your Drive folder structure, open a file, work on it, and optionally upload the annotated result back to Drive. Files in Drive don’t appear in your reMarkable library unless you explicitly bring them in.

This shape is deliberate. reMarkable’s storage model is built around the device’s own library, with cloud sync handled by reMarkable Connect (their cloud service, separate from Google’s). Google Drive sits alongside as a window into your wider file storage rather than a mirror. The advantage is you don’t fill the tablet with every PDF you’ve ever saved; the trade is that the integration won’t auto-update files you’ve changed in Drive on your computer.

Setup

How to connect reMarkable to Google Drive (step by step)

  1. Confirm you have an active reMarkable Connect subscription. Without Connect, the Integrations option is greyed out. Connect costs $2.99 per month and is enabled on the reMarkable integrations dashboard if you haven’t already.
  2. On a computer, sign into your reMarkable account at the same URL above. The Integrations page lists Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox as available connections.
  3. Click Add next to Google Drive. A Google sign-in window opens.
  4. Enter the Google account that owns the Drive you want to connect. Google asks you to grant reMarkable permission to “See, edit, create, and delete” files in Drive. The permission is broad because the integration both reads from and writes to Drive; if you’re uncomfortable with the scope, the alternative is the manual upload route covered later.
  5. Approve the permission. The Integrations page now shows Google Drive as Connected.
  6. On the reMarkable tablet, make sure you’re on Wi-Fi. Open the menu and look for the Google Drive entry in the sidebar. If it doesn’t appear immediately, tap Menu, Settings, Storage to force a sync. The Drive entry should show within a minute.
  7. Tap Google Drive in the sidebar. Your full Drive folder structure appears. Navigate to a PDF, ePub, or Google Doc, and tap to open.

One specific behavior worth knowing: when you tap a Google Doc inside the integration, reMarkable’s cloud server instantly converts it to a PDF on the fly so the tablet can display it. The conversion is fast and reasonably faithful, but you can’t edit the typed text, move margins, or update formulas. You can highlight, underline, draw, and write on top, the same as any other PDF on the device. For documents you’d want to keep editing as text, the integration isn’t the right tool; for review, annotation, and sign-off, it works well.

Using it

Using the integration day to day

  • Open from Drive. Tap any file in the Google Drive sidebar to open it on the tablet. The file streams from Drive; reMarkable doesn’t permanently copy it to your local library unless you explicitly choose to.
  • Copy to local library. Long-press a file in Drive and choose Copy to My Files. The file lands in your reMarkable library and behaves like any other document. Useful for files you’ll annotate repeatedly or read offline.
  • Upload from local library to Drive. Long-press a file in My Files and choose Upload. The file goes to Google Drive (or OneDrive or Dropbox if those are connected too) at the location you pick. This is the “send the annotated PDF back to the computer” workflow most readers want.
  • What doesn’t auto-sync. Changes you make in Drive on your computer don’t propagate to a copy that’s already on the reMarkable. Re-opening from Drive picks up the latest version; an already-imported “My Files” copy is a snapshot at import time.

Without Connect

How to connect reMarkable to Google Drive without paying for Connect

Three reader complaints come up about Connect: the price ($2.99 per month feels steep for what’s largely a sync feature), the “we already pay subscriptions for everything” frustration, and the privacy of the broad Google permission. There are two genuine ways to skip Connect entirely while still moving files between Google Drive and a reMarkable.

  • The desktop app, manually. Drag files from Google Drive’s web interface to your computer’s reMarkable desktop app library, and they sync to the tablet over reMarkable’s free cloud tier. Annotations stay on the tablet; to send them back to Drive, you export the PDF from the desktop app and upload it to Drive manually. Not pretty, but it’s free. We’ve covered the desktop app in reMarkable app for Windows.
  • Third-party automation. Open-source tools like reMarkable-autosync run on a server you control and mirror a Google Drive folder to your reMarkable’s hidden web interface (which the tablet exposes when USB-connected and developer mode is on). This works, but it requires technical setup and a continually-running server. For non-technical readers, Connect is the lower-friction option even at $2.99.

For broader integration questions and what reMarkable Connect adds beyond just Google Drive, the official reMarkable integrations support article is the canonical reference. For native template installation (which the Drive integration doesn’t do), our reMarkable template installer guide covers RCU and the eInkPads installer. For broader device questions, our reMarkable alternatives piece is the parent for the cross-device question, and the reMarkable hub indexes the rest.

If you’ve connected your reMarkable to Google Drive and the integration behaved differently than the steps above, drop the case in the comments. reMarkable updates the integration layer roughly each major firmware release, and we’d rather have a current page than a tidy one.