proton drive

Filen and Proton Drive both encrypt your files on your device, so neither company can read what you store. People comparing them usually want to know where the designs actually differ, and whether switching is practical.

	Filen	Proton Drive
File encryption	AES-256-GCM, done on your device[1]	A session key per file, with OpenPGP keys (Curve25519) protecting the keys[2]
File names and metadata	Encrypted	Encrypted, so Proton cannot see names[3]
Tamper detection	AES-GCM is an authenticated mode, so a changed chunk fails to decrypt	Signatures on key passphrases and on a chain of block hashes, so a changed or reordered block is caught[4]
Open source	All apps, AGPL-3.0[5]	Apps and encryption libraries[6]
Independent audit	None linked from Filen's about and security pages	Reports published, Drive audited by Securitum[7]
Company and servers	Germany, GDPR[8]	Switzerland, outside EU and US jurisdiction[9]
Other tools	WebDAV and S3 only through a self-hosted CLI mirror; rclone backend[10]	rclone backend rated Tier 4 and in beta[11]; Proton Drive CLI[12]

Filen's model is the simpler one to describe. Contents are encrypted with AES-256 in GCM mode on your device, and the key material is protected by your password. Filen's pages describe the cipher and the open source clients, and leave the key layout to the code.

Proton builds on OpenPGP. Each file and folder gets its own key pair, and the passphrase for each is encrypted with the key of the folder above it, up to a share key that your account key unlocks. File contents use one session key per file. Every passphrase is signed with your key, and so is the chain of block hashes, so a compromised server cannot forge or reorder content without detection^[13].

The practical effect shows up in sharing. Because Proton wraps keys with public-key cryptography, adding a person means encrypting one key again for them, and the file itself is untouched.

• Audits. Proton publishes third-party audit reports. Filen invites you to read its code, and its pages do not link an audit report. If an independent audit matters to you, check Filen's current status before deciding
• Jurisdiction. Both are inside strong privacy regimes. Germany follows EU law and GDPR. Switzerland sits outside the EU and cites its own protections
• Ecosystem. Proton Drive comes with Mail, Pass and the rest of the Proton account. Filen is storage-first, with sync, notes and chat inside the same app
• Getting data out. Neither can hand your files to another service, because neither can read them. Both need a tool that decrypts on your computer

Neither provider can copy your files to the other, and the keys do not transfer. A move has to decrypt each file on your computer, then encrypt it again with the destination's keys.

Blober does this in one workflow. Sign in to each provider through its own login page, pick the files, and run the transfer. The Filen setup guide and the Proton Drive setup guide cover the sign-in steps. Neither password is stored by Blober.

Which one is more private? Both hide file contents and names from the provider. The differences are the legal setting and how much outside verification each has, covered above.

Is AES-256-GCM weaker than OpenPGP? No. They do different jobs. AES-GCM is a cipher, and OpenPGP is a format that also covers key management and signatures. Proton's files are still encrypted with a symmetric session key. The difference is how keys are wrapped, shared and signed.

Can I move my files from Filen to Proton Drive in one step? Yes. Blober reads from Filen, decrypts on your computer, and writes to Proton Drive, which encrypts them again. You do not export or re-import anything by hand.

Will my folder structure survive the move? Yes. Folders and file names carry over, and a path template can reorganize them on the way.

What happens to shared links and sharing settings? Blober moves files, not sharing settings. Sharing is tied to each provider's keys, so recreate links and shares at the destination.

What if I lose my password? Neither company can read your files, so a lost password can mean lost data. Set up the recovery option your provider offers before you rely on it.

• How to back up Filen (or move files out) without the CLI
• Migrate to or from Proton Drive
• What is Proton Drive?
• Filen setup guide

Move files between Filen, Proton Drive and 20+ other providers in one workflow. Blober runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

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 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

Proton Drive is one of the most privacy-respecting cloud storage services you can pick. End-to-end PGP encryption, Swiss jurisdiction, open-source clients, and a zero-access architecture: not even Proton can read your files. Over 100 million accounts trust it^[1]. If privacy comes first, Proton Drive is a strong choice.

The catch is that Proton built sync clients, not transfer tools. The apps sync a folder between your device and Proton Drive, which works fine while Proton is your only cloud. The moment you want to pull files in from Google Drive, Dropbox, or S3, or move a Proton library out to cold storage, you are on your own. The official path is to download everything locally and re-upload it. That is fine for a few gigabytes. For 500 GB of photos spread across three Google accounts, it is a weekend you do not get back.

This guide runs through the pain points one by one, with sources, then shows what Blober does about each. It is also honest about when rclone is still the better tool.

Proton offers native clients on four platforms, plus web access:

Platform	Client	Sync	File Browser	Bulk Transfer From Other Clouds
Windows	Desktop app	Folder sync	Via web	No
macOS	Desktop app	Folder sync	Via web	No
iOS	Mobile app	Photo backup	In-app	No
Android	Mobile app	Photo backup	In-app	No
Linux	No client	No	Web only	No
Web	Browser	No	Yes	No

Look at the last column. Across every platform, on every client, there is no built-in way to transfer files from another cloud into Proton Drive. You download to your machine first, then let the sync client pick the files up, which means you need enough free local storage to hold everything in transit.

If you are on Linux it is worse: there is no desktop client at all. You get the web interface, which works, but it does not support drag-and-drop bulk uploads from other services either.

Proton ships folder-sync apps for Windows and macOS, and photo backup on mobile. None of them can pull files from another cloud. If you want 200 GB of photos from Google Drive inside Proton Drive, the official path is: download everything to your machine, then let the sync client upload it. That needs free local disk equal to your whole library, and it sends every byte over the network twice.

The feature requests confirm the gap. Proton's own UserVoice has long-running requests for exactly this, including "Easy Switch for Google Photos" and a post titled "To switch from Google Photos, Proton drive is not the deal"^[2].

Proton's official "How to import from Google Photos into Proton Drive" guide^[3] is a Takeout pipeline: export from Google Takeout, wait for the email link, download the zips, unzip them, then import the folder in the web app or the Windows desktop app.

Three things make this painful:

1. It depends on Takeout. Google prepares the archive in the background, which "may take a while," and the download link expires after a week^[4].
2. The desktop import is Windows-only. The September 2025 announcement that "Google Photos import now supported on Drive for Windows" notes "Photo import support for macOS is coming soon"^[5]. On a Mac you are left with the web drag-and-drop path.
3. Takeout scatters albums. Proton's own guide warns: "Google Takeout splits large exports into multiple parts, but it may not keep photos from the same year in the same part. As a result, photos from the same time period may end up scattered across different folders"^[6]. Users then reorganize by year by hand to get clean albums.

rclone is the standard open-source answer, and its Proton Drive backend works, with caveats worth knowing before you trust a library to it. The rclone docs are explicit:

• The backend "is currently in Beta" and is rated Tier 4, rclone's lowest support tier^[7].
• Modification times are not preserved: "Proton Drive Bridge does not support updating modification times yet"^[8].
• Setup puts your password in a config file. Config asks for username, password, 2FA, and optionally your OTP secret and mailbox password^[9].
• The underlying library is honest about risk: "There are likely quite a few errors in this library, as there isn't official documentation available"^[10].
• Caching goes stale with concurrent clients: "if there are concurrent clients accessing the same mount point, then we might have a problem with caching the stale data"^[11].

As of 2026 Proton has no full-featured Linux desktop sync client. The June 2026 Proton Drive CLI announcement says a "full-featured desktop client with sync is on its way"^[12], and the engine-rebuild post confirms Proton is "actively building one of the community's most-requested features: the Proton Drive client for Linux"^[13]. Until then, Linux users get the CLI, which is not a drop-in replacement. Proton's own words: "only the applications include a full synchronization engine that runs in the background"^[14].

Proton removed its iOS Files (File Provider) integration and is rebuilding it. A June 2026 post by Proton's iOS lead explains the constraint: the extension runs in a sandboxed process capped at roughly 20 MB of memory, and Proton is reworking its SDK to fit. Proton says "we'd be surprised if this isn't resolved within the year"^[15]. In the meantime, iOS users cannot browse their whole Proton Drive from the Files app.

Proton Docs and Sheets are improving, but community feedback is candid. A top r/ProtonDrive post is titled "As Always Proton Sheet is Buggy and Proton Docs is slow to add feature!" and reports Sheets freezing on large datasets and missing document features like shapes^[16]. Other recent complaints include spreadsheet tab ordering reverting on reopen and no PDF export from Sheets. This matters if you are planning to move a heavy Google Workspace workflow over to Proton.

rclone is the canonical open-source tool for cloud storage. It supports 70+ backends and is genuinely excellent at what it does, and its Proton Drive backend works, with the caveats listed above. If you are already in the rclone ecosystem and those tradeoffs fit, rclone is a perfectly good option. Blober is a different style of tool for a different style of user, and the rest of this article is about that.

Blober takes a different approach: instead of asking for your credentials in a config file, it asks Proton for them.

When you connect Proton Drive in Blober, a browser window opens to Proton's own login page. You sign in with your email, password, and 2FA exactly as you would in any browser. There is no config file with credentials on disk, and nothing to type into a CLI. The provider guide covers how Proton Drive login works in Blober.

Operation	Supported	Details
Browse	Yes	Navigate your full folder tree
Download	Yes	Parallel, resumable downloads
Upload	Yes	Parallel uploads, auto-creates folders
Delete	Yes	Moves to Proton Trash (recoverable)
Metadata	Yes	Filename, size, created and modified dates
Multiple accounts	Yes	Each account gets its own session; run transfers in parallel

1. Transfer from any supported provider directly to Proton Drive. Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, Rabata, GoPro Cloud, local disk. No intermediate downloads.
2. Transfer from Proton Drive to any other provider. Moving away from Proton, or shifting a subset to cold storage on Backblaze? Blober handles it.
3. Selective file transfer. Browse the source, pick exactly the files you want, transfer only those. Not a full sync of everything.
4. Saved workflows. Set up "Dropbox to Proton Drive" once and run it whenever you want. The workflow remembers source path, destination path, filters, and file naming templates.
5. Runs on Linux. Blober works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Since Proton does not ship a Linux desktop client, Blober is one of the few ways to get a desktop-native Proton Drive experience on Linux without a browser.
6. Resumable transfers. If your session expires mid-transfer, Blober prompts you to sign in again and picks up where it left off. No files are lost or duplicated.

One detail matters for Google Photos specifically. Blober lists your library chronologically and keeps each photo's capture date, so a transfer lands in date-based folders. It does not recreate Google Photos albums as Proton albums, because Google provides no API for that kind of access. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

Here is the situation Blober is built for.

You are on Google Drive or Dropbox, you have decided to move to Proton Drive for privacy, and you have 200 GB of documents and photos spread across folders. Today your options are:

Option A: Manual download and re-upload

1. Download 200 GB from Google Drive to your machine (hours, needs free disk space)
2. Wait for the Proton Drive sync client to upload it all (hours more; encryption is CPU-heavy)
3. Repeat for Dropbox
4. Hope nothing failed silently

Option B: Google Takeout plus manual upload

1. Request a Takeout archive (can take days)
2. Download the archive(s)
3. Extract, organize, upload to Proton Drive
4. Storage used: 3x (source cloud + local archive + Proton)

Option C: rclone

1. Run rclone config and set up your Google/Dropbox and Proton remotes
2. Provide your Proton credentials when prompted
3. Run rclone copy gdrive: protondrive: with the flags that fit your scenario
4. Drive everything from the CLI, including monitoring and restarts

Option D: Blober

1. Sign in to Google Drive (OAuth) or Dropbox (OAuth)
2. Sign in to Proton Drive (browser login)
3. Select the files you want
4. Start the transfer, then re-run the same workflow whenever you need to

	Blober	rclone
Auth method	Browser login on Proton's own page	Credentials in rclone config
Interface	Native desktop GUI	CLI
Resume on failure	Automatic	Manual restart
Linux	Native desktop app	CLI
Cross-provider transfer	Built-in (pick source and destination)	rclone copy source: dest:
Multiple Proton accounts	Each one its own session	Separate config remotes
Scriptable automation	Saved workflows	Cron-friendly CLI
Mount as filesystem	Not supported	Supported (FUSE)

A note on modification times, because rclone's Proton backend does not preserve them at all. Blober reads source timestamps for metadata and naming. If preserving exact modification times on Proton is a hard requirement for you, verify it on your own transfer before committing a large library.

Blober is a good fit if:

• You are migrating into Proton Drive from Google Drive, Dropbox, or another cloud
• You are moving out of Proton Drive, or shifting a subset to cold storage
• You are on Linux and want a desktop-native way to manage Proton Drive files
• You would rather log in through a browser than configure credentials in a file
• You want a repeatable, named workflow you can re-run later

rclone is a good fit if:

• You are already in the rclone ecosystem and want one tool for everything
• You need scriptable, cron-based automation
• You want to mount Proton Drive as a filesystem (FUSE)
• You prefer CLI control over a GUI

Is rclone safe to use with Proton Drive? It works, but treat it as experimental. rclone rates the backend Tier 4, calls it "in Beta," and notes the bridge library "likely" has errors^[17]. Modification times are not preserved, and setup stores your Proton password and 2FA secret in the rclone config file.

Why can't I import Google Photos to Proton Drive on my Mac? Proton's Google Photos import is Windows-only as of 2026; the announcement says macOS support "is coming soon"^[18]. On macOS you are limited to the web drag-and-drop path, which still needs a Takeout export first.

Does Proton Drive work on Linux? Partially. Proton ships a CLI for Linux and is building a full desktop client^[19]. There is no official GUI sync client for Linux today. Blober runs natively on Linux and provides one.

Does Blober store my Proton password? No. Blober opens Proton's own login page in a browser window. You sign in there, exactly as you would on drive.proton.me, and your password never passes through Blober.

Is Blober a sync tool? No. Blober is a transfer tool. It moves a selected set of files from one provider to another and stops. Nothing runs in the background and overwrites files, unlike a sync client.

Where do my Google Photos land when I move them with Blober? In Proton Drive's folder tree, organized by each photo's capture date. Blober lists Google Photos chronologically and does not recreate Google Photos albums. If you want the Proton Photos timeline and album view instead, Proton's official Google Photos import (Windows-only) is the supported route, and it sorts imported photos into albums from the folder structure. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• Proton Drive vs Proton Photos: What's the Difference?
• Server-to-Server vs Download-and-Reupload

Move a Proton Drive library in or out without filling your disk. Blober signs you into Proton through Proton's own login page, then transfers to or from 20+ providers with parallel, resumable transfers. Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Download Blober at blober.io

Proton markets both "Proton Drive" and "Proton Photos," and the two names trip people up when they are deciding where their photos should go, or where their photos end up after a migration.

Proton Photos is not a separate product. It is the photo-and-album surface inside Proton Drive. Proton Drive is the general-purpose file storage product: folders, sync, sharing, Docs, Sheets. Proton Photos is the media surface built on top of it: timeline, albums, favorites, filters, EXIF-based organization, automatic mobile backup. Both share the same end-to-end encryption, the same storage quota, and one login.

If you upload a JPEG through the Photos tab, it appears in your photo timeline. If you drop the same file into a folder in My Files, it lives in the file tree. Knowing which surface holds your photos matters more than it sounds, because it decides how they are organized after a Google Photos migration.

Proton's web app has two main views:

	Proton Drive	Proton Photos
URL	drive.proton.me	drive.proton.me/u/0/photos
What it is	General file storage	Photo and video surface
Organized by	Folders, subfolders, file names	Timeline (date), albums, favorites, filters
Typical content	Documents, downloads, work files, archives	Camera roll, photos, videos, albums
Key features	Folder sync (Windows/macOS), sharing, Proton Docs and Sheets	Automatic mobile backup, albums, favorites, filters[1]
Sharing	Files and folders with password and expiry[2]	Albums shared by email invite, with view or contribute roles[3]
Encryption	End-to-end, zero-access	Same end-to-end encryption, including album names and photo locations[4]
Storage quota	Your Proton Drive quota	Same quota, shared with Proton Drive

The rule of thumb: Photos surface is for things you want in a timeline and albums; Drive surface is for everything else.

• Camera-roll backups from the iOS and Android apps land in Proton Photos, because automatic photo backup uploads to the Photos surface^[5].
• When you use the Windows app's "Photos import" feature, imported pictures are sorted into albums automatically^[6].
• Files you drag into My Files in the web app go to the Drive surface as ordinary files, even if they are images.

The practical difference is organization: Photos gives you a date timeline, albums, favorites, and filters. Drive gives you a folder tree. A photo sitting in a Drive folder is still encrypted and safe, but it will not show up in your Photos timeline unless it is in the Photos surface.

When you move a library out of Google Photos, the destination determines the result:

• Into Proton Photos: your photos are organized into a timeline and albums, which is the closest to how Google Photos worked. Proton's official Google Photos import does exactly this: it takes your Takeout folder and "automatically upload your photos and then sort them into albums"^[7]. Both Google Photos and Proton Photos don't have folders. If you want the timeline and albums, point it at Photos.
• Into Proton Drive folders: your photos are files in a folder tree. This is fine for archiving, but you lose the timeline and album view unless you then move them into Photos. If you want date-based folder organization, point the destination at a My Files folder.

There is a catch with the official Google Photos import that also matters here: it builds albums from folder structure, and Google Takeout can scatter photos from the same year across different parts, so Proton's own guide recommends manually reorganizing by year first^[8]. For a cleaner path, see How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive, which compares the Takeout route with a direct transfer.

Choose Proton Drive if you want a general encrypted file store: documents, downloads, work files, synced folders, shared files with password protection, and Docs/Sheets.

Use Proton Photos for your personal media: automatic camera-roll backup, a date timeline, albums for trips and events, favorites, and filters.

In practice you get both with the same account. The question is only which surface your media ends up in, and that is decided by where you upload it. For anything photo-like, put it in Photos if you want the timeline and albums. For everything else, use Drive.

Is Proton Photos a separate subscription? No. Proton Photos is part of Proton Drive. It uses the same storage quota and the same plan, so 200 GB of Drive Plus covers both your files and your photos^[9].

Are my photos in Proton Photos encrypted? Yes. Everything in Proton Photos uses the same end-to-end encryption as Proton Drive, and Proton says album names and photo metadata like locations are encrypted too^[10].

If I upload photos to Proton Drive folders, will they appear in Proton Photos? Not automatically. Files in the Drive surface live in the folder tree; the Photos surface has its own timeline and albums. Import through the Photos flow (or the Windows app's Photos import) to get photos into the Photos surface.

Which surface should I use to migrate Google Photos? Proton Photos, if you want the timeline and albums to match how Google Photos worked. See Proton Photos vs Google Photos for the comparison and How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive for the mechanics.

Can I move files between the Drive and Photos surfaces? Proton's import flow is the supported path for getting photos into the Photos surface. For moving the other direction, the general file-transfer story for Proton Drive is covered in Migrating To or From Proton Drive.

• How to Move Photos from My Files to Proton Photos
• Proton Photos vs Google Photos
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For
• Alternatives to Google Photos

Google Photos is the default home for most people's photo library, and it has real costs: only 15 GB of free storage shared with Gmail and Drive, a compression option that downsizes originals, an inactivity policy that can delete your content, and a business model built on analyzing your photos. Proton positions its Photos feature as the private alternative, and the demand is real: a top r/ProtonDrive post titled "Make Proton Photos more like a real alternative to Google Photos" collects a long list of the gaps users hit^[1].

Proton Photos is the photo surface inside Proton Drive. It beats Google Photos on privacy: every photo is end-to-end encrypted before upload, nothing is compressed unless you choose it, and Proton says it does not scan your photos or train AI on them. Google Photos still wins on convenience: mature face recognition, AI-powered search, and a far larger feature set. If your priority is keeping photos private and unmodified, Proton wins. If you rely on Google's AI search and automatic face grouping day to day, you will feel the difference.

This article is the honest feature-by-feature comparison. For the actual move, see How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

Proton Photos is not a separate app with its own login. It is the photo and album surface of Proton Drive, at drive.proton.me/u/0/photos. Your photo quota is your Proton Drive quota (5 GB free, 200 GB on Drive Plus), and the photos share the same end-to-end encryption as every other file in Proton Drive^[2]. Proton's own framing is direct: "Unlike Google Photos, Proton Drive empowers you to control your pictures, videos, and albums with uncompromising privacy and security"^[3].

Feature	Proton Photos	Google Photos
Free storage	5 GB (shared with Proton Drive)	15 GB (shared with Gmail and Drive)
End-to-end encryption	Yes, zero-access. Proton says "no one, not even Proton, can access your files"[4]	No. Google holds the keys and can read your photos
Compression	Originals stored as-is, no forced downscaling	"Storage saver" (previously "High quality") compresses photos[5]
Face recognition	Not available	Yes, mature, automatic
AI search	No (search by date, type, favorites, filters)	Yes, natural-language and object search, Gemini integration
Albums	Yes, shared albums with email invites, favorites[6]	Yes, shared albums
Auto mobile backup	Yes, iOS and Android[7]	Yes, iOS and Android
Metadata / EXIF	Preserved; album names and photo locations are encrypted[8]	Preserved, but readable by Google
Scanning / AI training	Proton states it does not scan photos or use them to train AI[9]	Google analyzes photos (faces, objects, locations) and has folded Gemini into Photos
Inactivity deletion	No such policy documented	Google may delete content after 2+ years of inactivity[10]
Jurisdiction	Switzerland, open source, audited	US-based, subject to US law
Price (paid)	Drive Plus: 200 GB, see pricing	Google One paid tiers (see plans)

End-to-end encryption. This is the entire point. Proton encrypts photos, album names, and metadata like locations on your device before upload, so even Proton cannot read them^[11]. Google Photos is not encrypted this way; Google can see your photos, and Proton's marketing presses the point that Google "scans and analyzes the faces" in them^[12].

No forced compression. Google's "Storage saver" mode downsizes originals to fit more in your quota, and it is the default that most people have been running for years. Proton stores originals as-is. If you care about keeping full-resolution files, that is a meaningful difference for a large library.

No AI-training or advertising pipeline. Proton's position is that your photos are "too personal to be scanned by surveillance systems or analyzed by algorithms"^[13]. Google, by contrast, has integrated Gemini into Google Photos and uses the data for its own models.

You are not renting against a deletion policy. Google's own support page states: "If you're inactive in Google Photos for 2 years or more, your content may be deleted"^[14]. Proton does not have an equivalent inactivity-deletion policy for stored photos.

Be honest about the gaps before switching, because they are real:

• Face recognition. Google automatically groups photos by person and lets you search by face. Proton Photos has no face recognition today.
• AI search. Google's natural-language search ("photos of my dog at the beach") is best-in-class. Proton searches by date, type, favorite, and filter, not by content.
• Mature editor and ecosystem. Google Photos has editing tools, shared libraries, partner sharing, and deep Android integration. Proton's Photos surface is younger.
• Bigger free tier. 15 GB vs 5 GB, both shared with the rest of the account.

The r/ProtonDrive thread that calls for Proton Photos to be "more like a real alternative" lists the specific gaps users hit^[15]:

1. Viewing on-device photos alongside cloud photos in one interface.
2. iCloud-style storage optimization (full original in the cloud, small preview on the device).
3. A dedicated duplicates view to find and remove duplicate files.
4. Editing tools (the post suggests Lumo image editing).
5. Editing the captured date of a photo to correct wrong timestamps.
6. A standalone Proton Photos app.

None of these are dealbreakers for a private archive, but they matter if you treat Proton Photos as a full Google Photos replacement for daily browsing.

	Proton	Google
Free	5 GB	15 GB
200 GB	Drive Plus (see pricing)	Google One paid tiers, see plans
500 GB	Proton Unlimited (VPN + Mail + Calendar + Pass)	Google One paid tiers

Proton's paid tier is a flat storage subscription. Google One bundles other Google benefits, but the storage is the part that matters for photos. Prices drift, so check the Proton Drive pricing page and Google One plans before deciding.

Choose Proton Photos if you want originals kept unmodified, end-to-end encrypted, in a zero-access service you are not renting against a deletion policy. Choose Google Photos if you rely on face recognition, AI search, and editing day to day and are comfortable with Google reading your library.

If you switch, the mechanics are covered in depth in How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive, which compares Proton's official Takeout-based import with a direct transfer, and Migrating To or From Proton Drive covers the general Proton Drive migration story.

Is Proton Photos free? Yes. It is the photo surface of Proton Drive, and the free plan includes 5 GB of storage for photos and files. Proton says that is "enough space to store more than 1000 photos" at an average size of 4 MB^[16]. Paid plans start with 200 GB on Drive Plus^[17].

Does Proton Photos compress my photos? No. Originals are stored as-is. Google's "Storage saver" mode, by contrast, compresses photos to save space^[18].

Does Proton Photos have face recognition? Not yet. Google Photos has automatic face grouping; Proton Photos does not. It is one of the most-requested gaps in the community^[19].

Can Proton Photos replace Google Photos? For private, encrypted photo storage: yes. For a drop-in with Google's AI search, face recognition, and editing: not fully yet. This article walks through exactly what you gain and what you give up.

Is Proton Photos the same as Proton Drive? No. Proton Drive is the general file-storage product (folders, sync, sharing, Docs and Sheets). Proton Photos is the photo-and-album surface inside it, optimized for media. See How is Proton Drive different to Proton Photos? for the full explanation.

How do I get my existing photos out of Google Photos? Google has no bulk "download all" button, and Takeout is slow and Windows-only for Proton's import. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive and How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout for the options.

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

Mainstream cloud storage, meaning Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud, can read your files, scan your photos, and use them for ad profiles or AI training. If you do not want a storage company looking at your data, most standard options are a poor fit^[1].

Proton Drive is the encrypted alternative from the makers of Proton Mail. Files are encrypted on your device before upload, so not even Proton can read them. It covers the same basics as Google Drive or Dropbox: file storage, folder sync, sharing, photo backup, Docs and Sheets, plus a free 5 GB plan. This guide covers what Proton Drive is used for, how the security works, what it costs, and where it falls short.

Proton Drive is general-purpose file storage, but in practice it is most used for:

1. Private file storage and sync. Back up documents, photos, and work files, and keep a folder synced between your computer and the cloud with the Windows and macOS desktop apps.
2. Photo and video backup. The iOS and Android apps back up your camera roll automatically, and Proton Drive organizes photos into albums and a searchable timeline. Proton states the free 5 GB plan is "enough space to store more than 1000 photos," based on an average file size of 4 MB^[2].
3. Private documents and spreadsheets. Proton Docs and Proton Sheets are online editors bundled with Drive, positioned as a private alternative to Google Docs and Google Sheets.
4. Secure file sharing. You can share files and folders with password protection and expiry dates, and revoke access at any time. Proton says it does "not impose file-size limits or restrict the number of times your contacts can download them"^[3].
5. Sensitive records. Passwords, passports, contracts, and tax files are a natural fit because of the encryption.
6. A destination when leaving Google, Dropbox, or iCloud. Privacy-conscious users migrating away from Big Tech often land here.

Proton's own description of how it works: "We encrypt your files, their names, and more right on your device before they're uploaded to the cloud, so only you hold the keys to unlock them"^[4].

This is the zero-access model: the encryption keys never leave your device, so Proton cannot read your data even if asked. The main security points:

• End-to-end encryption. Files, folder names, and filenames are encrypted client-side using the open-source OpenPGP standard with Curve25519 encryption^[5].
• Zero-access. "No one, not even Proton, can access your files and folders or see their names without your permission"^[6].
• Swiss jurisdiction. Proton is based in Switzerland. Under Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal Code, Proton is prohibited from sharing data with foreign authorities^[7].
• Open source and audited. The clients and encryption libraries are public, and Proton Drive has been audited by Securitum, an independent European security auditor^[8].
• Scale. Proton says it is "trusted by over 100 million users and organizations"^[9].

Feature	Details
File storage	Store any file type; files are split into 4 MB blocks for high-performance encryption
Desktop sync	Windows and macOS apps sync a local folder with the cloud
Photo backup	Automatic camera-roll backup on iOS and Android, with albums and a timeline
Proton Docs	Private online document editor
Proton Sheets	Private online spreadsheet editor with formulas and charts
Secure sharing	Password-protected links with expiry dates and revocable access
File versioning	Recover previous file versions (10 years on paid plans)
Encrypted sharing links	Shared content is end-to-end encrypted
Linux	CLI available; full desktop client announced as in progress

Proton's consumer plans are the ones most people choose between. Exact prices change, so check the Proton Drive pricing page before deciding^[10]:

Plan	Storage	Includes
Free	5 GB	Photos, documents, Docs and Sheets
Drive Plus	200 GB	10 years of file version recovery
Proton Unlimited	500 GB	Plus Proton VPN, Mail, Calendar, and Pass
Proton Duo	2 TB	Up to 2 users, everything in Unlimited

All paid plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and higher tiers are available through business plans.

Proton Drive runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and the web^[11]. There is no full-featured Linux desktop sync client yet: Proton released a Proton Drive CLI for Windows, macOS, and Linux in June 2026, and states a "full-featured desktop client with sync is on its way"^[12].

Proton has been investing heavily in performance. In June 2026 Proton announced it "rebuilt Proton Drive's engine" on a shared SDK, with uploads up to 3x faster and downloads up to 2x faster across platforms^[13]. A companion cryptography update made file encryption up to 4x faster: encrypting a 4 MB file dropped from 97 ms to 32 ms on mobile and from 12 ms to 3 ms on desktop^[14]. For heavy transfers this matters, because Proton encrypts every block locally, which is CPU work no other storage provider does.

The trade-off for the privacy is that getting files in and out of Proton Drive, at scale, is not a first-class experience. The official clients are sync tools, not migration tools: there is no built-in way to pull files directly from Google Drive, Dropbox, or S3, and the official Google Photos import runs through Google Takeout and is currently Windows-only. Linux users have a CLI but no full sync client, and the iOS Files integration is temporarily unavailable while Proton rebuilds it. Each of these pain points is covered in detail in Migrating To or From Proton Drive.

Is Proton Drive really private? Yes, for what it claims. Files are encrypted on your device before upload using OpenPGP with Curve25519, and Proton runs a zero-access model where it does not hold the decryption keys. Proton says "no one, not even Proton, can access your files"^[15]. The code is open source and audited by Securitum.

Is Proton Drive free? Yes. The free plan includes 5 GB of storage for files and photos, plus Proton Docs and Sheets, all end-to-end encrypted^[16]. Paid plans start with 200 GB on Drive Plus^[17].

Can Proton Drive replace Google Photos? For secure, private photo storage, yes: it has automatic camera-roll backup, albums, favorites, filters, and a timeline. It does not offer Google's unlimited free compression, AI search, or face recognition. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive for the migration path.

How much storage do I get on the free plan? 5 GB, which Proton says holds more than 1000 photos at an average size of 4 MB^[18].

Does Proton Drive have a desktop app for Linux? Not a full sync client yet. Proton ships a CLI for Linux and is building a full-featured Linux desktop client on its shared SDK^[19][20]. Third-party tools like Blober fill the gap today.

Can I move my files from Google Drive or Dropbox into Proton Drive? Proton offers manual import flows (Takeout for Google Photos, drag-and-drop for Google Drive). There is no direct cross-cloud transfer in the official apps. Blober connects to Proton Drive and can transfer in from Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Backblaze B2, and 20+ other sources directly. See Migrating To or From Proton Drive for the full comparison.

• Migrating To or From Proton Drive
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• What Local-First Means