Where does Google Drive File Stream store offline files and folders on a Mac? I use Google Drive File Stream for work, and there are certain mission-critical files that I need available for offline access.  File Stream makes this easy: control-click on the file, and choose &quot;Available Offline&quot;.  Great!
But where are these files stored?  With the &quot;old&quot; Google Drive (now &quot;Backup &amp; Sync&quot;) there was a Google Drive folder at the top of my user directory; this folder was always available, whether Backup &amp; Sync was running or not, and Time Machine would back it up for me (if I wanted it to).  With File Stream, I have no idea where those files are -- when the program is not running the &quot;Google Drive&quot; volume unmounts from my system, and the files appear to be completely inaccessible; moreover I don't think Time Machine backs them up.
Where is File Stream storing these offline files?  Is there a way to back them up, or to access them when the program is not running?
Just for clarity’s sake: I am interested in the answers to these questions on MacOS, specifically in Catalina, if that makes a difference.
By default, Google Drive for desktop (formerly known as Google Drive File Stream) stores cached files in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS/$account_id/content_cache, where $account_id is the numeric ID of your google account. The files aren't encrypted or anything, but they don't have any metadata (or even their original filenames) so I don't think you'll find them terribly useful. The metadata seems to be stored in various SQLite databases in in the $account_id folder. In an emergency an expert might be able to reconstruct the original file names and folder structure.
If you want a full backup of your Google Drive, you can try backing up the Google Drive volume itself (/Volumes/GoogleDrive), while Google Drive for desktop is running.