How to download folder from Google drive in Android phones

Important update: since ES File Explorer removed from Google Play due to violation of the policy, this article is no longer valid. Please follow the below link for the new tutorial:
https://geekyhacker.com/2019/05/21/how-to-download-folders-in-google-drive-android-2019/

Nowadays cloud storage is getting more and more popular and people are using cloud vastly for different purposes, to be exact it is cloud and mobile computing era.

One of the most popular cloud storage provider is Google, giving away 15 GB free space to each Google account. And certainly Google drive app is preinstalled in almost any Android device. However, the official Google drive application has a major drawback. It is unable to download folder as is. The easiest workaround is to zip the files before upload. Then download the compressed files and unzip them which definitely requires another application to be installed. The extra effort does not sound so pleasant (at least to me). So, there must be a better way to overcome a problem.

If you use file manager application, ES File Explorer should be familiar to you. Surprisingly, the application can connect to Google drive or more specifically to any cloud providers (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, S3, MegaCloud, etc.) on the fly and download files and folders just like file explorer, intuitive. This is so amazing because it frees you to download bunch of useless applications for each service provider.

The procedure is fairly simple, yet is worth to mention.

In the first step, open ES File Explorer and swipe your finger from left side of screen to the right side. The following side menu should be appeared.

Then from Network tab select Cloud. In the next step, click on + sign on top right menu.

A new window pops up, select Google Drive.

Then a new browser page opens which redirects to Google account.

Enter your credential and the click sign in, then Google asks for permission, grant it.

Finally, you should be able to see an icon like this which connects to your Google drive account.

Now it is possible to transfer any file/folder to your device storage and vice versa.

Besides that ES File Explorer allows to sync data within a network. For instance, you can share a folder in your computer and then access to it via ES File Explorer in your phone/tablet, provided that both the computer and phone are in the same network.

Furthermore, ES File Explorer provides built-in browser, Android TV, FTP, Weather, Facebook applications on top up being able to play video, music and opening pictures.

To summarize it in one sentence, I see ES File Explorer as a swiss knife which frees me of installing bunch of unnecessary applications on my device by providing many built-in facilities.