Everything you need to know about DriveNest, a cloud storage analyzer for Android covering Google Drive and OneDrive, by Falcon Drive Labs.
DriveNest is defined as a privacy-first cloud storage analyzer: a free Android application that reads only file metadata to build a complete picture of your storage on Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, without ever accessing file contents. It is developed and maintained by Falcon Drive Labs, an independent software studio. Contact: drivenestapp@gmail.com. Privacy Policy · Terms of Service
DriveNest is a cloud storage analyzer for Android. It works with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, visualizing your folder hierarchy, finding duplicate files, auditing sharing security, identifying cleanup opportunities, and tracking storage trends over time.
Never without your explicit approval, and the mechanism differs by cloud. On Google Drive, DriveNest holds read-only metadata access (drive.metadata.readonly) and cannot modify or delete anything directly — cleanup and unshare actions happen through Google Apps Scripts it generates and deploys to your own account, which you review and run yourself. On OneDrive, DriveNest can carry out an action in the app, but only after you confirm it and only once you grant the additional write permission it asks for at that moment. Cleanup moves files to the recycle bin or trash rather than deleting them permanently, and every generated script includes an undo function.
Only metadata: file names, sizes, dates, MIME types, folder structure, content hashes, and sharing permissions. DriveNest never reads the contents of your files on either cloud. All data stays on your device.
After the initial scan (which requires internet to fetch metadata from Google Drive or OneDrive), all analysis runs on your device. You can browse results, view charts, and generate scripts without an internet connection.
OneDrive is fully supported — it shipped in DriveNest v2, available now on Google Play. DriveNest is built on a provider-agnostic plugin architecture, so adding a new cloud isn't a rewrite — the entire analysis engine is provider-independent by design. Everything you get for Google Drive — duplicate detection, the security audit, cleanup scripts, and storage trends — works on OneDrive too, with Dropbox next in line.
Yes. Connect your Google account, your Microsoft account, or both — DriveNest walks you through each sign-in during onboarding, and you can add or remove a cloud later from Settings. Each cloud keeps its own scans, dashboard, saved history, and scheduled-scan setup, and you switch between them from the navigation drawer. Your plan applies to every cloud you connect, so a single Premium or Ultimate purchase covers both. Free-tier scan limits are counted per cloud rather than shared.
Yes, and deliberately so. OneDrive adds in-app execution of cleanup, unshare, and version actions — a frequently requested feature — because OneDrive has no Apps Script equivalent. Long-running jobs continue when you leave the app, report progress in a notification, and can be paused and resumed. Google Drive is unchanged: it still deploys a Google Apps Script that you run yourself. In both cases you review every action first and nothing runs silently. One consequence of the difference: automatic cleanup after a scheduled scan is Google Drive only, since it relies on the Apps Script pipeline.
Yes. Your scan data and settings are preserved when you purchase. You immediately get access to unlimited full-Drive scans and all Premium features. The Free tier is limited to 20% of discovered files (up to 2,000 files) with a cooldown between scans.
One-time (perpetual) purchases: Google Play does not support upgrading between one-time purchases. If you bought Premium perpetual and want Ultimate, you would need to purchase Ultimate separately. The perpetual purchase is permanent and non-refundable. Choose your tier carefully.
Subscriptions: Currently, switching between Premium and Ultimate subscriptions requires cancelling the current subscription (takes effect at end of billing period) and purchasing the new one. Managed in-app subscription upgrades with prorated billing are planned for a future update.
Perpetual is a one-time purchase that gives you all features of your tier permanently. Subscription is billed monthly with a 6-month commitment period (installment plan) and adds automation features on top: scheduled background scans, storage budget alerts, and auto-cleanup deployment (Ultimate). You can have both. Update policy also differs: subscriptions receive major version updates, while perpetual licenses are entitled to minor and bugfix updates within the purchased version line.
Subscriptions use a 6-month commitment period with monthly billing. After the commitment period, you can cancel at any renewal. If you cancel, you keep all features of the perpetual tier (if you purchased one). Subscription-only features like scheduled scans and auto-cleanup stop at the end of the paid period. Your saved scans and data remain on your device.
Yes. The perpetual purchase gives you the base features permanently. The subscription adds automation on top. If you cancel the subscription, you keep the perpetual features.
DriveNest uses the content hash provided by your storage provider to find byte-for-byte identical files, regardless of filename or location. On top of that, heuristic scoring analyzes path depth, folder structure, and access patterns to classify each duplicate as waste (safe to remove) or structural (intentional copies like templates).
Ultimate tier can scan files shared with you by others. These don't count against your storage quota but can contain duplicates and security risks. This partition is always excluded from scheduled background scans.
DriveNest computes a 0–100 security score based on sharing exposure. It detects publicly accessible files, overshared items (many collaborators), forgotten shares (no activity in months), and shared folders that expose entire folder trees. It separates direct sharing from inherited folder sharing so you can fix the root cause.
DriveNest generates executable scripts (Google Apps Script, Bash, or PowerShell) that perform actions on your files. Cleanup scripts move files to trash. Unshare scripts revoke non-owner permissions. You can deploy Apps Scripts directly to your Google account with one tap, or download and run them manually.
Ghost files are items that clutter your cloud storage but are invisible in normal browsing: empty folders, zero-size files, hidden items, and orphaned files whose parent folder was deleted. DriveNest detects and lists them so you can clean them up.
Revision overhead refers to the storage quota consumed by old saved versions of non-Workspace files (PDFs, images, Office documents). Google Drive bills every stored revision against your quota even though only the current version appears in Drive. DriveNest identifies the top offenders with per-file breakdowns — stored version count, keep-forever count, and exact overhead in bytes — and generates a revision cleanup script to reclaim that space. See the Revision Overhead page for full details.
Subscribers can configure background scans that run automatically on a schedule you choose (every 4 hours to weekly). Scheduled scanning is available for both Google Drive and OneDrive, each with its own schedule. Scans are bound to a specific account and run even when the app is closed, using Android's WorkManager. Results appear when you next open the app.
Ultimate subscribers can enable automatic cleanup script deployment. After each scheduled scan, DriveNest identifies confirmed safe-to-remove duplicates and deploys an Apps Script to your Google account. You still need to open the script and run it manually — nothing is deleted without your approval. This feature is Google Drive only, because it is built on the Apps Script pipeline, which OneDrive has no equivalent of.
Scheduled scans are bound to a specific account. If you switch accounts, scans are paused until you switch back or rebind the schedule to the new account. This prevents accidentally scanning the wrong Drive or OneDrive.
No. All scan data stays on your device. DriveNest makes no server calls, has no backend, and sends no telemetry or analytics. The only network access is to your cloud provider's own API — the Google Drive API or Microsoft Graph — to fetch metadata and to carry out actions you have approved.
Scan backups are encrypted with AES-256-CBC automatically when exported. The encrypted file can be imported across devices. Encryption is transparent — no password is needed. Backups use the .dnbk format with a magic header for validation.
At sign-in, only drive.metadata.readonly is requested — read-only access to file metadata (names, sizes, dates, sharing permissions, MD5 checksums). DriveNest cannot read file contents. The script.projects scope is requested separately via incremental auth only when you first deploy a cleanup or unshare script, and requires explicit consent.
At sign-in DriveNest requests three read-level permissions: Files.Read for your OneDrive item metadata, User.Read for your basic profile, and offline_access so your session can refresh without repeated sign-ins. Write access is not requested at sign-in. The Files.ReadWrite permission is asked for separately, through incremental consent, only at the moment you first ask DriveNest to carry out an action in the app — and DriveNest shows you a plain-language explanation before that consent screen appears. If you never use in-app execution, DriveNest never holds write access to your OneDrive.
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