How the SocialQ Google Drive folder layout works

What does a single post look like in Google Drive?

A post is one folder. The folder’s name is the schedule and its contents are the post itself: the media file or files, and the caption. There is no spreadsheet to keep in sync and no separate scheduling form to fill in — if the folder is in the right place with the right name, SocialQ will find it on its next hourly scan and put it in your approval queue.

A typical week therefore looks like a list of dated folders sitting side by side, which also makes it easy to see at a glance, in Drive itself, what is planned and when.

Times in the folder name use the 24-hour clock, so 1730 is 5:30 PM. Several posts on the same day are fine — just give each one its own folder with its own time.

How should the folder be named?

Use the pattern YYYY-MM-DD_HHmm: a four-digit year, two-digit month and two-digit day separated by hyphens, then an underscore, then the hour and minute run together. 2026-11-10_0900 means 10 November 2026 at 09:00. Zero-padding matters — write 0900, not 900, and 2026-03-05, not 2026-3-5 — because the name is read as a date and time, not as free text.

Because the date comes first and is zero-padded, Drive’s normal name sort also lists your posts in the order they will go out, which is a small but real convenience when you are planning a busy week.

Which time zone does the folder time use?

Pacific Time by default. A folder named 2026-11-10_0900 is read as 9:00 AM Pacific unless you change the time zone in SocialQ’s settings, in which case the same folder name is read in the zone you picked. Pick the zone you naturally think in when you name folders, and keep it consistent — the app’s queue and calendar show you the resulting times so you can double-check before approving.

What files go inside a post folder?

For a Reel, put the video in the folder as video.mp4. For a photo or carousel, put the JPEG images in the folder instead — one image for a single photo post, several for a carousel. In both cases add a caption.txt file containing the caption exactly as you want it to appear on Instagram.

The caption is plain text, so line breaks, emoji and hashtags you type into caption.txt come through as written. If you want to change the caption later you don’t have to edit the file: SocialQ lets you edit the caption in the approval queue before you approve the post.

• video.mp4 — the Reel’s video.
• JPEG images — one for a photo post, several for a carousel.
• caption.txt — the caption text.
• Optionally, a per-post audio file for a Reel — it overrides the default Reel sound chosen in Settings (see how to schedule Instagram Reels from Google Drive).

What happens to the folder after the post goes out?

SocialQ tidies up after itself. Once a post has been published, its folder is moved into a folder called Posted; if publishing failed, it goes into a folder called Failed instead. Your scheduling folder therefore only ever contains what is still to come, and the history of what went out (or didn’t) is kept rather than deleted.

If a post lands in Failed, the folder and its files are still there, so you can look at what went wrong, fix it, and schedule it again with a new dated folder name.

Can I change a post’s time after the folder exists?

Yes — either rename the folder yourself, or use Reschedule in the approval queue. Reschedule renames the Drive folder to the new time for you, so Drive and the app never disagree about when a post is due. You can also edit the time and caption from the queue, unapprove a post you have second thoughts about, or use Post now (which asks you to confirm) to publish immediately.

See approving posts, missed posts and a sleeping Mac for what each of those actions does to a post’s status.