Google-drive – Get share link of multiple files in Google Drive

I created a command-line tool to handle this.

After following the setup instructions on the GitHub project, you can run the tool with a specified path prefix and the email address of the new owner:

python transfer.py PATH-PREFIX NEW-OWNER-EMAIL

After getting authorization from OAuth, it will recursively walk the Google Drive account it got authorization to, match against the path prefix (ignoring non-matches), and then transfer ownership to the new email. If the new email address indicates a user who isn't even shared on the item yet, it will handle that as well. The current owner will not lose access, but the new or old owner can revoke it.

I should note that it's not always possible to transfer ownership of an item in Drive. For example, it's not possible to move ownership for an item from G Suite (Google Apps for Work) account to a normal GMail account. It can be shared (which the script will do), but ownership transfer will fail.

One could write a script for this, but with 600 files, it seems easier to use the interface:

1. Search for .RW2 using the search bar on top of screen:
2. Scroll down in the list of search result so that it loads more... and more... and more...
3. Press Ctrl-A or its Mac equivalent to select all these items.
4. Click on the trash icon to move them to trash.

Step 2 can be slightly annoying with many files. Drive uses infinite-scroll layout instead of fixed-size pagination of Gmail. It also lacks Gmail's capability to select all search results, even those not shown on the page. But still, the process is manageable and takes less time than writing an Apps Script and then worrying about whether it deleted the right things.