photo migration

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 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