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How to import creatives from Google Drive

Last updated June 10, 2026

If your creatives already live in Google Drive, you can pull them straight into your uplads media library without downloading them to your computer first. uplads uses Google's own native picker, so the experience looks and behaves exactly like the file browser you already know from Google.

Before you start, make sure your Google Drive account is connected. If you haven't done that yet, follow How to connect Google Drive to import creatives first.

Open the Google Drive picker

The Drive picker lives on the Creatives step of the launch wizard, alongside your media library.

  1. Open the launch wizard and go to the Creatives step (see Understanding the bulk launch wizard steps).
  2. Find the import options near the media library and choose the Google Drive import action.
  3. Google's native picker opens in an overlay on top of uplads.

Because uplads already holds an OAuth token from when you connected your account, the picker opens immediately. You won't be asked to sign in to Google again for each import.

Search and filter to images and videos

The picker is pre-filtered so you only see the file types that actually work as ad creatives. uplads asks Google to show only these MIME types:

  • Images — PNG, JPEG, WebP, and GIF
  • Videos — MP4, QuickTime (.mov), and WebM

A few things worth knowing:

  • Folders are not selectable. The picker intentionally disables folder selection, so you select individual files rather than a whole directory. You can still browse into folders to find what you need.
  • Use the search bar at the top of the picker to find files by name across your Drive.
  • Files in other formats won't appear in the picker, which keeps you from accidentally importing something Meta can't use.

Select multiple files and review

Multi-select is enabled, so you can build up a batch in one pass.

  1. Click each file you want to import. Selected files are highlighted.
  2. Click again to deselect anything you picked by mistake.
  3. Review your selection before confirming — for each file, Google passes its name, type, and size back to uplads.

Import into your media library

When your selection looks right, confirm it in the picker (the Select button). uplads then:

  1. Reads the list of files you chose, along with each file's Drive ID, name, MIME type, and size.
  2. Streams each file's bytes server-side directly from Google Drive — the files never route through your browser's download folder.
  3. Registers them in your media library, where they're ready to attach to your launch.

uplads only ever touches the specific files you select. It uses Google's drive.file scope, which grants per-file access to picked files and nothing else in your Drive — your other files stay private.

Why thumbnails may not render

You might notice the picker gallery shows file names but no preview thumbnails. This happens when the Google Picker API key isn't configured for your uplads environment.

The good news: file selection and import still work perfectly without it. The missing key only affects the visual thumbnail previews inside Google's picker — not your ability to choose files or import them into the library. If thumbnails matter to your team, ask your admin to set a Google Cloud Picker API key for the environment.

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