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Apple publishes no API for a personal iCloud account, and there is no developer key you can request for your own Drive or Photos library. Blober signs in on Apple's own web page, captures the validated session, and presents the account as two roots.

Root	What it holds	Read	Write
iCloud Drive	Your files and folders, with the tree preserved	✅	✅
iCloud Photos	One chronological timeline of photos and videos	✅	✅

Apple lists whatever other people shared with you inside iCloud Drive, as ordinary items with a shared label. Blober checks what each share lets you do.

Two details matter before a transfer. iCloud Drive delete is a move to Trash, the file is recoverable for 30 days and its storage is not freed until then. Photos has no folders, so there is no album browsing. Renaming a photo works, because its name is a field on the record behind it. Moving between the two iCloud accounts works too, Blober copies the file across and deletes the original.

You sign in on Apple's own page, never on a Blober form: click Open iCloud Login, enter your Apple ID, and complete two-factor authentication. When the login finishes, tick Keep me signed in before you submit it. The screen that follows asks you to trust the device: click Trust, so the session is long-lived. Wait for iCloud to finish loading, and Blober captures the validated session and closes the window. It never sees or stores your Apple ID password, and no app-specific password is needed. Advanced Data Protection is supported as long as Access iCloud Data on the Web is on; China (GCBD) accounts are not.

Writing to the Photos library is the part other tools leave out. rclone's iclouddrive backend can read the library, but its docs are explicit: "iCloud Photos is read-only. Upload, delete, rename, and move operations are not supported."^[1]

That makes Blober one of very few tools that can put new photos and videos into iCloud Photos, and the only one that does it from a desktop app rather than from Apple's own Photos.

What to expect when you upload:

• Images keep the capture date Blober sends, so an old library is not stamped with today's date.
• Videos use the creation date stored inside the file when it has one; Apple prefers the media's own metadata.
• Camera raw files such as dng, cr2, arw, nef, orf and raf are skipped because iCloud photos does not accept them
• A new item can take a few seconds to appear in the timeline.

iCloud works as a source and a destination, so it can sit on either side of a transfer with any other provider Blober supports: AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, pCloud, Proton Drive, and GoPro Cloud.

Some transfers that come up often:

• GoPro Cloud to iCloud Drive. Pull the camera library out of GoPro and into Drive as ordinary files. Drive files do not join the Photos library, so send them to the iCloud Photos root instead if you want them in the Photos app.
• Google Photos to iCloud Photos. Move a whole Google library into Apple's timeline, with capture dates intact.
• Proton Drive to iCloud. Both are encrypted in transit to their own servers, and Blober decrypts Proton on the way out.
• iCloud to a NAS or a cheap bucket. Keep an offline copy of Drive and Photos in one run.

rclone can do several of these too, and it is free. Three of its limits shape the choice. Setting up the iCloud remote needs your Apple ID password and a 2FA code, and the trust token it leaves in the config is renewed every 30 days^[2]. Since March 31, 2025 rclone "can only download photos it uploaded," so a pre-existing Google Photos library needs the separate gphotosdl proxy, and its shared Google Photos client ID is being retired during 2026, which means creating your own Google Cloud app^[3]. Its Proton Drive backend is described as Beta, is built on a third-party bridge, covers Proton Drive files only, and generates no thumbnails^[4]. Blober covers both with no setup beyond the browser login.

rclone is a command line tool with config files and per-job flags: no desktop app, no saved workflows, no thumbnail generation. Blober stores each transfer as a workflow you can run again with one click. Our Blober vs rclone write-up goes through that in detail.

• No albums in Photos. The library is one timeline, so there is nothing to browse by album or folder. A photo can move between the two libraries, and a rename works in place.
• Drive delete is Trash. Space frees after 30 days, not immediately, delete manually if you want to clear the memory immediately
• Shared items are workable Other people's folders appear in Drive and can be browsed, and an item inside one renames, moves, and deletes when the share allows it.
• China (GCBD) accounts are not supported.
• Camera raw files are refused before upload to Photos. iCloud Drive takes them as ordinary files, but the Photos library refuses dng, cr2, arw, nef, orf and raf with a skip message. Apple's own upload page refuses them too ("This item's file type is not supported"), so convert raw files to JPEG or HEIC first if they need to be in the library.
• Sessions expire. Signing back in is one click, and transfers resume where they left off.

Does Blober need my Apple ID password? No. You sign in on Apple's own page, and Blober stores only the validated session cookies.

Can I upload to iCloud Photos with rclone? No. rclone's own docs state the iCloud Photos service is read-only, and that upload, delete, rename, and move are not supported^[5].

Will my photos land in the Photos app or in Drive? Whichever root you choose. The iCloud Photos root puts them in the Photos timeline. The iCloud Drive root keeps them as files that do not join the Photos library.

Does Advanced Data Protection break this? No, as long as Access iCloud Data on the Web is on in your Apple settings.

What happens if a video will not upload? Apple's transcoder refuses some media. Blober reports the item as skipped rather than retrying it on the fallback route, so the rest of the transfer keeps going.

• Blober vs rclone - where a desktop app fits next to a command line tool
• Transferring GoPro Footage to iCloud Drive on a Mac - what to expect from the iCloud Drive folder itself
• iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos Setup - the provider page

Blober connects to iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, GoPro Cloud, Proton Drive, and the rest of its provider list in one desktop app. One-time purchase, no subscription, no per-GB fees.

Download Blober at blober.io

If rclone already moves your other clouds around, adding Proton Drive looks like the obvious next step. It is a real rclone backend, open source, and for scheduled jobs and mounts it does a genuinely good job. The catch only shows up when the job involves photos or videos.

You use rclone to backup a camera roll, then open Proton expecting the Photos tab to be full. The files are there, just not where or what you expected: a folder in My Files full of generic file icons, and nothing in the Photos timeline.

People describe it plainly:

Uploading images via rclone results in generic file icons instead of visual thumbnails inside the Proton Drive interface.

That line comes from a thread where a NAS owner set up rclone with Proton Drive and asked why nothing looked like a photo^[1]. It is not a Proton bug. It is what happens when a general file mover uploads into a service whose photo features depend on extra data the mover never sends.

Bot blober and rclone use Proton's own encryption, so privacy is identical either way. The difference is what survives the upload: thumbnails, capture dates, and which surface the media ends up on. For a photo library, those decide whether the result is usable.

Proton Drive is end to end encrypted, so Proton's servers never see the inside of your files. They cannot generate a preview from the original, because nothing is decrypted until it reaches your device.

That means the uploader has to make the thumbnails. Proton's own apps decode each image or video on your device, build the small preview images, encrypt them, and store them beside the original^[2]. Those extra blocks are what the interface renders as a tile or a preview.

rclone's Proton backend only speaks the file side of the API. It uploads the original and stops there, with no thumbnail blocks and no preview. On the rclone issue tracker this shows up as a known missing feature: the client would have to generate the preview and upload it for the file to display one^[3]. Proton then has nothing to render but a generic icon.

There is also no fix later. Proton Drive has no option to set or replace a thumbnail on a file that is already uploaded, and its servers cannot generate one after the fact. To get a preview you have to upload the file again with a client that sends thumbnails. So the tool you choose on day one decides what your library looks like from then on.

Blober uploads the same thumbnail data Proton's own clients do. Before an upload it decodes the media, produces Proton's standard preview sizes, and sends them alongside the original. Images and videos both show real previews in My Files, and photos get a proper tile in the Photos timeline. Audio gets the same care, and here Blober goes further than rclone could: a music file's embedded album art (the cover on an mp3 or m4a) is read straight off the file and uploaded as its thumbnail, so audio shows a real cover tile instead of a generic icon.

Proton Photos organizes the timeline by each photo's capture time. That value comes from the photo's EXIF data and is set when the file is uploaded. When it is missing, a photo has no real capture date, so it lands wherever upload time puts it.

The rclone backend documentation is direct about the underlying gap: the backend does not support updating modification times yet^[4]. rclone treats photos as files. Migrate a few years of pictures that way and you get a timeline that groups by upload date, not by when anything was taken.

Blober reads the EXIF capture time and hands it to Proton with the upload, and it carries over the file's own dates from the source. Photos group under the day they were actually taken.

Proton keeps two surfaces under one login: My Files, a folder tree, and Photos, a timeline with albums. Where a photo lands decides how you see it later.

rclone is a file backend, and it only ever sees the file side. Its remote maps to the My Files tree, and rclone forum threads describe trying to reach Proton's separate Photos area and failing, because that library sits outside the folder tree the backend exposes^[5]. Sync a camera roll this way and every picture lands in a folder, none of them appear in the Photos tab, and there is no album step to put them there.

Blober is built around the destination you choose. Pick the Photos surface and each upload becomes a timeline photo. Pick My Files and it is a regular file. Because Proton Photos is a flat timeline without folders, Blober automatically keeps the path rules you set sensible on either destination.

Most of the rclone column below comes from rclone's own Proton Drive documentation^[6].

	Blober	rclone (Proton Drive)
Interface	Desktop app	Terminal commands and config files
Proton login	Sign in inside the app	Username and password prompts plus 2FA or OTP, with an optional mailbox password for two-password accounts
Keys	Handled for you	Encryption keys must already exist from a normal browser login, and there is no official Proton API documentation to lean on when something breaks
Status	GA product	Community backend, still marked Beta and classed as Tier 4
Thumbnails	Generated for images, videos, and audio (album art)	Not generated
Capture time	Read from EXIF	Not set
Modification times	Preserved	Not supported by the backend
Photos surface	A real destination	Files and folders only
Fits best	Photo migrations, people who do not live in a terminal	Scripted sync, mounts, headless servers

That last row is the honest summary. rclone is the right tool when the job is moving files on a schedule or mounting Proton as a drive and you do not care about Proton's photo features. It is the wrong tool when the point of the move is getting a photo library to look right inside Proton.

If you are migrating a photo library, especially out of Google Photos, you want the uploader to behave like Proton's own client: generate previews, carry the capture dates, and put media where the Photos tab can show it. That is what Blober does.

If you are a terminal user syncing folders, running backups on a schedule, or mounting Proton on a server, rclone is a strong, established choice and you already know whether its tradeoffs matter to you.

For a photo library, that choice is the difference between files in a folder and a Photos tab that works the way Proton intends.

Why do my rclone-uploaded photos have no thumbnails in Proton Drive? Proton is end to end encrypted, so its servers cannot create previews; the uploading client has to. rclone's backend only moves files and sends no thumbnail data, so Proton shows a generic icon.

Can I add a thumbnail to a file I already uploaded with rclone? No. Proton Drive does not let you set or replace a thumbnail on an existing file, and its servers cannot generate one later. You would have to upload the file again with a client that produces thumbnails, which is what Blober does.

Does rclone upload into Proton Photos albums or the timeline? No. Its Proton backend works with files and folders in My Files only. Photos uploaded that way do not appear in the Photos timeline and are not added to albums.

Does Blober make thumbnails for audio files? Yes, and rclone cannot. Blober reads a music file's embedded album art (the cover on an mp3 or m4a) and uploads it as a Type1 thumbnail, so audio gets a real cover tile instead of a generic icon. rclone generates no thumbnails at all.

How stable is rclone's Proton Drive backend? It is a community backend. rclone ships it as Beta and Tier 4, Proton publishes no official API documentation, and rclone's own docs warn that Proton's protocol changes may leave some accounts incompatible.

For Proton Drive, is Blober better than rclone? For scripted file sync into folders, rclone is the established terminal option. For a photo library, where previews, capture dates, and the Photos timeline matter, Blober is the better fit because it uploads the thumbnail and metadata Proton needs. Both encrypt your data the same way.

• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• Proton Drive vs Proton Photos: What's the Difference?
• Proton Photos vs Google Photos
• Migrating To or From Proton Drive
• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For

You cannot move photos from My Files into Proton Photos. You are not missing an option or a setting: the two live in separate storage areas of your account - My Files holds folders, Proton Photos is a timeline (plus albums) - and Proton does not offer a way to move a photo from one to the other.

The only way a photo gets from My Files into the Photos timeline is to download it and upload it again into Photos. That is the community workaround: "You can upload them via the web version - not ideal but its a way of doing it"^[1].

This is not user error. The most upvoted answer to exactly this question on Proton's forum says it plainly: "No, you are not doing anything wrong, this is not possible at the moment"^[2]. The thread is full of the same frustration:

• "I uploaded all my images in my proton drive, but I want to have them at the photos section. I can't seem to move them. Am I doing something wrong?"^[3]
• "The photos section is pretty much reserved for photos backup from phones at the moment. If you manually import, they go to files instead."^[4]
• A Proton idea on UserVoice asking for "a way I could import photos from files uploaded to the photo section of drive from already existing directories within proton drive" has gathered dozens of votes^[5].

Proton's supported path for getting photos into Photos is the import flow: download your files locally, then upload them through the Photos tab (or the Windows app's Photos import). For a handful of files that is fine. For a real library it is a chore:

• One by one. The web UI has no "select all in this folder and send to Photos," so you are clicking through hundreds of files.
• No resume. A browser upload that fails halfway starts over, and nothing tracks which photos you already moved.
• Duplicates are silent. Proton Photos does not dedupe on upload - re-uploading a photo that is already in the timeline creates a second copy instead of replacing it.
• Cleanup is manual. After the upload you still have to delete the originals from My Files, file by file, or you end up with every photo in two places.

The same problem runs the other way: because Photos is built around phone backup, screenshots, PDFs, and documents you meant to keep as files can end up in the timeline, and there is no UI to send them back to a folder.

Blober connects to Proton Drive and treats both surfaces - My Files and the Photos timeline - as ordinary source and destination folders. It streams files from My Files to Photos.

To move your whole photo library from My Files to Proton Photos:

1. In Blober, add Proton Drive as the source and browse into My Files.

2. Add Proton Drive as the destination and choose the Photos surface.

3. Select all photos with one glob instead of clicking files. In Source Configuration, set the Include Pattern to:

   **/*.{jpg,jpeg,png,webp,heic,gif}

You can also use the built-in Raw Photos extension preset for CR2/NEF/ARW/DNG/RAW.

4. Run the workflow as a move. Blober copies each photo into Proton Photos and deletes the original from My Files in the same run.

The whole library lands in the Photos timeline in one run. Nothing is left behind in My Files, and there is no local download folder to clean up.

If files that are not photos ended up in your timeline - screenshots, documents, archives, or videos you would rather keep as ordinary files - Blober moves them back just as easily:

1. Set Proton Photos as the source and My Files (a folder) as the destination.

2. Use an Include Pattern that targets non-photo files, for example:

   **/*.{pdf,doc,docx,xls,xlsx,txt,zip}

   or exclude image extensions with an Exclude Pattern of **/*.{jpg,jpeg,png,webp,heic,gif}.

3. Run it as a move. The non-photos leave the timeline and land in a real folder tree where you can organize them.

Can I move photos from My Files to Proton Photos in the web app? No. Proton offers no move between the two surfaces. The community answer is "not possible at the moment," and the only manual path is download + re-upload through the Photos import flow.

Why doesn't Proton support this? My Files and the Photos timeline are separate storage areas, and Proton does not offer a move between them. The only way a photo crosses is to download it and upload it again, which is what Blober automates.

Does Blober move the photos for me? Yes. It downloads each photo and uploads it into Photos, because that is the only way a file crosses from My Files to Photos. What Blober automates is the selection, the transfer, the retry, and the cleanup, so you do not do it by hand in a browser.

Will moving my photos create duplicates in Photos? Proton Photos does not dedupe on upload. A Blober move deletes each original from My Files after it is copied, so a re-run of the same workflow finds nothing left to move and does not duplicate anything.

• Proton Drive vs Proton Photos: What's the Difference?
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• Proton Photos vs Google Photos
• Select Files With Glob Include and Exclude Filters in Blober

Google Photos is convenient, but it has costs people increasingly want to avoid: 15 GB of free storage shared with Gmail and Drive, a default compression mode that downsizes originals, an inactivity policy that can delete your content, and a company that analyzes your photos and has folded Gemini AI into the product^[1]. The r/degoogle community is full of people asking for a way out, like the post "Alternatives to Google Photos?"^[2].

There are five realistic categories of alternatives, and the right one depends on how much you value privacy, whether you are willing to self-host, and whether you want a photo-specific app or just encrypted storage. The thread's consensus: for a managed privacy-first service, Ente Photos; for self-hosting, Immich; for a photo surface tied to a broader encrypted cloud, Proton Photos.

This round-up compares them all with current, sourced numbers, and links to the migration guides at the end.

Alternative	Type	Privacy model	Free tier	Price (paid)	Best for
Ente Photos	Managed, E2E encrypted	End-to-end encryption, open source, self-hostable	10 GB free forever	From $2.49/mo[3]	Privacy-first with a Google-Photos-like app
Proton Photos	Inside Proton Drive	End-to-end, zero-access, Swiss	5 GB free	From $4.99/mo (200 GB)[4]	Privacy plus a broader encrypted cloud
Immich	Self-hosted, open source	Your server, your keys	Free software; you pay for hardware	No subscription	Full control, face recognition, no monthly fee
iCloud Photos	Apple ecosystem	Encrypted in transit/at rest; Apple holds keys	5 GB shared iCloud	Paid iCloud tiers[5]	People already in the Apple ecosystem
Amazon Photos	Managed	Encrypted; Amazon holds keys	5 GB, or unlimited photos with Prime	Plans from $1.99/mo[6]	Prime members with big photo libraries
Flickr	Photography community	Photos are public/private by setting; no E2E	Free tier with upload limits	Pro subscription[7]	Photographers who want a community and portfolio
Backblaze B2 / S3	Object storage	Standard cloud encryption	None	About $6/TB/mo[8]	Cold archival, not daily photo browsing

Ente is the most common recommendation in the de-Googling community, and the top comment on that thread recommends it for anyone who does not want to self-host^[9]. It offers end-to-end encrypted backups, on-device face recognition, a zero-knowledge AI search, shared albums, memories, and a family plan, all open source with apps for Android, iOS, web, macOS, Linux, and Windows^[10]. The free tier is 10 GB forever, and paid plans start at a few dollars a month^[11].

Proton Photos is the photo surface of Proton Drive: the same end-to-end encryption, automatic mobile backup, albums, favorites, and filters, with a free 5 GB plan and paid Drive Plus tiers^[12]. It is the strongest choice if you also want an encrypted cloud for files, Docs, and Sheets, not just photos. It is younger than Google Photos: no face recognition and no AI search yet, which the community has loudly requested^[13]. See the full comparison in Proton Photos vs Google Photos.

If you do not want to rent storage from anyone, Immich is the leading open-source, self-hosted photo manager. It offers automatic mobile backup, facial recognition, shared albums, and search, running on your own server^[14]. The trade-off is exactly what self-hosting always costs: you provide the hardware, keep it updated, and own the failure domain. For a few gigabytes of phone photos it may be overkill; for a large family archive it gives you total control.

These replace Google Photos without really solving the privacy problem; they just move your photos into a different company's cloud:

• iCloud Photos: the natural choice inside the Apple ecosystem, with 5 GB of shared free iCloud storage and paid tiers^[15].
• Amazon Photos: "Prime members get unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5 GB for video," with 5 GB for everyone else and paid storage from $1.99/mo^[16].
• OneDrive: Microsoft's storage, with photo backup built into the mobile app; storage is shared with the free OneDrive tier and Microsoft 365 plans^[17].

These are fine if your goal is simply to leave Google, but they do not change the underlying deal: your photos live with a company that holds the keys.

• Flickr: the photography community and portfolio option, with a free tier and a Pro subscription for unlimited uploads^[18]. Great for photographers who want visibility, not a private family archive.
• Backblaze B2 and S3-compatible storage: for the 3-2-1 backup mindset, object storage at around $6/TB/mo is the cheap way to keep an independent, cold copy of your library^[19]. It is storage, not a photo app: you pair it with a tool to browse or transfer. Blober supports B2 and the whole S3 family, so this is a natural pairing if you want a private archive you fully control. See How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout for the workflow.

None of this matters until your library is out of Google Photos, and that is the step every alternative expects you to handle yourself:

• Google Takeout is the official export, but it is slow, splits into 2 GB zips, and flattens albums (Proton's own import guide even warns about scattered folders)^[20].
• Blober connects to Google Photos directly and transfers the library to any supported destination, including Proton Drive, pCloud, Backblaze B2, or a local drive, without Takeout. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive and How to Backup Google Photos to pCloud.
• Whichever destination you pick, keep the originals until the transfer finishes and verify a sample before deleting anything from Google.

• Privacy + a managed app, no self-hosting: Ente Photos or Proton Photos.
• Total control, no subscription: self-host Immich (or a NAS).
• Already on Apple or Prime: iCloud Photos or Amazon Photos are the least-effort swaps.
• Photography portfolio: Flickr.
• Cheap independent archive: Backblaze B2 / S3 storage.
• Also want an encrypted file cloud, Docs, and Sheets: Proton Photos via Proton Drive.

What is the best private alternative to Google Photos? For a managed service, Ente Photos is the community favorite: end-to-end encrypted, open source, 10 GB free, with face recognition and shared albums^[21][22]. For a photo surface inside a broader encrypted cloud, Proton Photos.

Is there a free self-hosted Google Photos alternative? Yes. Immich is open source and free; you only pay for the hardware it runs on^[23]. It includes facial recognition and automatic mobile backup.

Does Amazon Photos give you unlimited storage? For Prime members, unlimited full-resolution photo storage plus 5 GB for video. Non-Prime customers get 5 GB total, with paid plans from $1.99/mo^[24].

How do I move my Google Photos library to another service? You can use Google Takeout (slow, zip-based) or a direct transfer tool. Blober connects to Google Photos and transfers to Proton Drive, pCloud, B2, or a local drive without Takeout. See How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout and How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

Will Google delete my photos if I stop using Google Photos? Google's policy states that if you are inactive in Google Photos for 2 years or more, your content may be deleted^[25]. This is one of the strongest reasons to hold an independent copy.

What about Proton Photos specifically? It is the photo surface inside Proton Drive: end-to-end encrypted, 5 GB free, paid tiers start with 200 GB on Drive Plus, with albums and automatic backup but no face recognition yet. See Proton Photos vs Google Photos.

• Proton Photos vs Google Photos
• How is Proton Drive different to Proton Photos?
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout
• How to Backup Google Photos to pCloud
• Migrating To or From Proton Drive

Google has no "download all" button, and every official route for moving your library out is slow and manual. If you are switching to Proton Drive for privacy, you have two practical paths.

Proton's official way exports your whole library through Google Takeout, then imports it into Proton Drive; the desktop import is Windows-only. Blober connects to Google Photos directly and transfers your photos to Proton Drive without Takeout, on any platform. This guide walks through both with the trade-offs, so you can pick the one that fits your library.

Proton's official guide, "How to import from Google Photos into Proton Drive"^[1], has three steps:

1. Export your Google Photos. Sign in at takeout.google.com, select Google Photos, and create an export. Google prepares the archive in the background and emails you a download link, which is valid for one week.
2. Download your export. Download all parts, then unzip them.
3. Import into Proton Drive. Either drag the unzipped folders into the Photos tab in the web app, or use the Windows desktop app: Photos import, then Import from Google Photos.

Proton's own documentation flags the rough edges:

• It is Windows-only for the desktop import. The feature announcement says "Google Photos import now supported on Drive for Windows" and notes "Photo import support for macOS is coming soon"^[2].
• Takeout scatters albums. "Google Takeout splits large exports into multiple parts, but it may not keep photos from the same year in the same part... This can cause issues if you're using Proton Drive's desktop app, which builds albums based on folder structure"^[3]. Proton's advice is to manually reorganize photos into year folders before importing.

For a small library, this path works. For tens of thousands of photos, it is a multi-day chore: wait for the export, download zips, extract, reorganize, then upload.

Blober is a desktop app that connects to Google Photos and to Proton Drive as two endpoints, then transfers the photos you select between them.

1. Connect Google Photos in Blober (you see your whole library in a file browser).
2. Connect Proton Drive (a browser window opens to Proton's own login page; your password never touches Blober).
3. Select the photos you want and start the transfer.

Google Photos has no folders. When you browse your library in Blober, the date-based view you see (for example 2026-08-23/IMG...) is a virtual grouping Blober builds so you can find photos by when they were taken - nothing is moving between real Google folders. There is no source folder tree to preserve.

Where your photos land in Proton then depends on which surface you choose as the destination:

• A folder in Proton Drive (My Files) - for example the root or a Google Photos folder. My Files is a normal folder tree, so Blober's YYYY-MM-DD/{filename} organization creates real date folders here.
• The Proton Photos surface (the timeline). Proton Photos is flat: it has no folders, only a date timeline plus albums. A YYYY-MM-DD/{filename} template cannot create folders on this surface, so every photo is uploaded flat into the timeline and sorted by its capture date instead. In Blober's preview the destination shows as Photos/{filename}, which reflects that. Google Photos albums are not recreated on either surface.

Pick My Files if you want a real date-folder structure. Pick Proton Photos if you want the timeline and albums. You can also move between the two later - see How to Move Photos from My Files to Proton Photos.

The differences from Takeout:

	Google Takeout + Proton import	Blober
Export wait	Hours to days for the archive email	None
Zips and unzipping	Yes, often 2 GB parts	No
Album structure	Can scatter photos across folders; manual reorganizing advised	Google Photos albums are not recreated. YYYY-MM-DD folders are created when the destination is a Proton Drive (My Files) folder; the Proton Photos surface is a flat timeline and has no folders
Platform	Desktop import is Windows-only; web is drag-and-drop	macOS, Windows, Linux
Resume on failure	No	Yes, per-file progress with automatic retry
Direct to Proton	Requires local download and re-upload	Streams directly to Proton Drive
Disk space	Needs free local disk for the whole library	Streams through memory, no full copy staged

Takeout is designed for backup, not migration. Its pain points are well documented in the community: the export can take a day or more, downloads split into 2 GB zips, there is no resume, and album metadata often lands in separate JSON files instead of real folders. People build entire tools to work around it. A developer who migrated 354 GB wrote up the script he built, "gphoto2proton," precisely because the official flows are so manual^[4].

Blober removes those steps entirely: no export request, no zips, no reorganizing. It reads the library in place and writes it straight to Proton Drive.

• Check your Proton storage first. The free plan is 5 GB. A large photo library needs Drive Plus (200 GB), Unlimited (500 GB), or Duo (2 TB)^[5].
• Keep originals until the transfer finishes. Verify a sample of photos in Proton Drive before deleting anything from Google Photos. Proton's own post-migration advice is to remove them from Google Photos only after they are safely stored^[6].
• Re-run for new photos. You can run the workflow again later to catch photos added since the last transfer. An interrupted run can be resumed from where it stopped.
• HEIC and RAW files transfer as-is. Blober copies the original files, so formats and EXIF metadata are preserved.

Can Proton Drive replace Google Photos? For private, encrypted photo storage, yes. Proton Drive has automatic mobile photo backup, albums, favorites, filters, and a timeline^[7]. It does not have Google's face recognition or unlimited free compression. The move is the hard part, which is what this guide covers.

Can I transfer all of my Google Photos to a hard drive? Yes. Connect Google Photos as the source in Blober and select your local disk as the destination. Blober downloads the whole library without Takeout, and re-runs can skip files that are already on the drive. See the related guide on backing up Google Photos below.

Does Blober use Google Takeout? No. Blober connects to Google Photos directly and transfers photos from the library, so there is no export request, no zip files, and no waiting for an email link. This is the key difference from Proton's official import flow.

Is Proton's Google Photos import available on macOS? Not yet. Proton's desktop import feature is Windows-only as of 2026, with macOS "coming soon"^[8]. Blober runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Will my albums be preserved when moving to Proton Drive? With Takeout, album structure can be scattered across folders, and Proton advises manually reorganizing by year to get clean albums^[9]. With Blober, Google Photos albums are not recreated. Each photo lands in a YYYY-MM-DD folder when the destination is a Proton Drive (My Files) folder; if the destination is the Proton Photos surface, photos land flat in the timeline because Proton Photos has no folders - only a timeline and albums.

How do I move Google Drive files (not photos) to Proton Drive? Proton offers a manual import guide for Google Drive files that uses drag-and-drop^[10]. Blober also handles Google Drive to Proton Drive transfers directly, alongside photos. See Migrating To or From Proton Drive.

• How to Move Photos from My Files to Proton Photos
• How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout
• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For
• Migrating To or From Proton Drive