Is it just me, or is getting a real direct file URL from Google Drive still unnecessarily painful?
I have been building n8n workflows for years - posting to social media, working with messaging apps, etc. - and kept running into the same issue. These platforms expect a raw, publicly accessible file URL. But Drive gives you a preview page, a redirect, or a link that quietly requires authentication.
I know there are workarounds (tweaking link formats, changing permissions, using the uc?export=download pattern, etc.), but they feel brittle.
After hitting this wall one too many times, I built a small internal tool for myself that simply uploads a file and returns a clean, CDN-backed direct URL.
Just a straight file link that works with most tools that expect a public URL.
I ended up turning it into a tiny API and published an n8n community node for it (n8n-nodes-uploadtourl). The official cloud node is currently in review.
Not trying to sell anything - I’m genuinely curious:
How are you handling direct file URLs in your automations?
Yeah the Google Drive direct link situation is a mess, I mostly just gave up and use R2 or S3 for anything that needs a real public URL. The uc?export=download hack breaks randomly and the auth stuff is a nightmare when you’re posting to platforms that just want a plain file link. Your community node sounds useful honestly, way cleaner than fighting with Drive permissions every time.
I personnaly don’t have that problem whenever i wanna get a file fom my Google Drive i just start the workflow with Google Drive Trigger that executes after an uploaded file in a certain folder, then a Google drive Download node, the rest of the workflow depends on whether is a xlx file or an image file i used it to insert data on my Database and post on social media
@Orionpax yes, there’s a default retention period of 7 days for all files. I’m considering making this configurable so users can decide the retention period.