how to make Google Drive put files in old directory (~/Google Drive/) instead of new directory (~/Google Drive/My Drive/)

Question

Background

I am using Google Drive for Desktop on two Mac laptops. Both are running "Catalina" (MacOS 10.15). I would like to be able to sync between them and have the filepaths be the same on both (i.e., if a.txt is at ~/Google Drive/a.txt on one computer I want it to be same on the other).

I just set up the second one a few weeks ago (the first was set up a couple years ago). On this second one, Google Drive has decided to store files not in ~/Google Drive/ but rather in ~/Google Drive/My Drive/. This has caused filepaths that are correct on the first computer to be wrong on the second computer. (The problem manifests itself in using BibDesk, where links to PDFs that work on the first computer do not work on the second computer.)

Question

Is there a way to tell Google Drive to eliminate the My Drive subdirectory and just use ~/Google Drive/ as it still does on the first computer? Or is there a clever way to set up symlinks to make the filepaths work? (The trouble is I can't just say ln -s "~/Google Drive/My Drive/" ~/Google\ Drive on the second computer because there is already a directory with that name.)

To be clear, I am not having trouble syncing files between the computers. That works fine. It's just that I want the filepath of a given file to be exactly the same on both.

Answer 1

OK, now I think I know the solution:

Computer 2: I realized that it was just a symlink to My Drive sitting inside the Google Drive folder, so I deleted that whole folder and then wrote ln -s "~/Google Drive/My Drive/" ~/Google\ Drive. That fixed the issue with BibDesk.

Computer 1: Then, to make BibDesk links on the first computer still work, I had to write ln -s "Google Drive" "My Drive".

Having these two symlinks makes them work on either computer whether the filepath begins with Google Drive or My Drive.