{"slug": "proton-drive", "name": "Proton Drive", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 13, "warners": 5, "score": -0.399, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-11-23", "latest": "2026-10-19", "why": "It's worse in many ways, but at least it's E2E encrypted and doesn't shove upgrading ads in our faces all the time.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4, "compare": 1, "warn": 5}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "It's worse in many ways, but at least it's E2E encrypted and doesn't shove upgrading ads in our faces all the time.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "proton.me", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://proton.me/drive", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Proton Drive"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800442880, "item_id": 50027680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50027680", "by": "friedtofu", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proton Drive already has a CLI built with linux users in mind by the Proton AG team", "excerpt": "Proton Drive already has a CLI built with linux users in mind by the Proton AG team... https://proton.me/business/drive/cli https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-cli", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Proton Drive for Linux"}, {"id": 772538946, "item_id": 48283684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48283684", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's worse in many ways, but at least it's E2E encrypted and doesn't shove upgrading ads in our faces all the time.", "excerpt": "All I care about is packrat and good syncing. For me that and end-to-end encryption (I know it's supported for teams now). Instead they just added more annoyances over time. Every time I logged into the web interface, I would get stupid upselling advertisements (maybe don't badger your paying users with that nonsense)? I replaced the official client by Maestral years ago, because they switched to embedding a web brow", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "Dropbox", "story": "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"}, {"id": 766557360, "item_id": 47909835, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909835", "by": "thom-gtdp", "date": "2026-04-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To send to other people: Proton drive", "excerpt": "To send to other people: Proton drive, to send to myself between devices: Whatsapp", "context": "", "use_case": "sending files to others", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What file sharing apps do you guys use?"}, {"id": 745687442, "item_id": 46605465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605465", "by": "teekert", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Drive is nice", "excerpt": "I like the calendar, it deals well with all other providers. I like Pass, especially for sharing credentials in the family. Drive is nice, although I switched to Immich. I use the VPN a lot too.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proton Lumo 1.3: Introducing Projects, a better way to organize and create"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802441504, "item_id": 50152594, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50152594", "by": "yuck39", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locally by the app is almost equal to a local photo library!", "excerpt": "> Yes, Proton Drive eats 400 GB of your iPad storage now, I don't know how to trim that regularly. I love Proton services and have been a subscriber for years. I do not understand what is going on with this. I have proton drive on my iPhone, I manually open it monthly to let my photos sync. I pay for the storage on proton drive to _save_ space locally, but whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locall", "context": "Proton subscriber for years", "use_case": "photo sync and storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.3"}, {"id": 774088082, "item_id": 48380505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380505", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which has its own set of warts", "excerpt": "I temporarily moved from Fastmail to Proton Mail, but found several downsides: * Loading mails (especially when going quickly through them) has quite some latency. Possibly due to decrypting. * Search is pretty bad compared to Fastmail. * The keyboard shortcuts seem to never work correctly. So I went back to Fastmail for mail (we still use Proton Drive, which has its own set of warts).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 761999362, "item_id": 47624960, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624960", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they don't have some core features like proper proton drive rsync support", "excerpt": "I once did some tinkering with Proton Docs and I was able to find that the comments within Proton Docs when I used it via curl definitely felt like it had something like logs (I feel like I should try doing this again to have more definitive answer) Either way, the response was encrypted but they hold the encryption key atleast within proton-docs. I also want to say that Proton allows the ability to change password t", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proton Meet Isn't What They Told You It Was"}, {"id": 736878688, "item_id": 46054918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46054918", "by": "d3Xt3r", "date": "2025-11-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "There's also the controversy around the CEO", "excerpt": "There's also the controversy around the CEO: https://blog.joyrex.net/moving-on-from-proton", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd"}]}], "who": [{"by": "khaosdoctor", "context": "Linux and Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000221", "date": "2026-10-07"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["photo sync and storage", "cloud storage mounted on linux", "storing design documents", "sending files to others"], "compared": [{"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "dropbox", "name": "Dropbox", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "rclone", "name": "rclone", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "restic", "name": "restic", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "proton-vpn", "name": "Proton VPN", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 749919889, "item_id": 46869993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46869993", "by": "samuel-freeman", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Drive, Architect", "excerpt": "I don't, but there are a few advertised (and others coming soon): - VPN, Engineering Manager, Apple (iOS, macOS): https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4655985101 - Drive, Architect: https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4630103101 - New product, Engineering director: https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4715670101", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2026)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024584", "title": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50003545", "title": "Show HN: Proton Drive for Linux", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149392", "title": "Linux 7.3", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000220", "title": "Mounting Proton Drive in Linux Like in Other OS's", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509606", "title": "Creating backup storage sucks", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375016", "title": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802441504, "item_id": 50152594, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50152594", "by": "yuck39", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locally by the app is almost equal to a local photo library!", "excerpt": "> Yes, Proton Drive eats 400 GB of your iPad storage now, I don't know how to trim that regularly. I love Proton services and have been a subscriber for years. I do not understand what is going on with this. I have proton drive on my iPhone, I manually open it monthly to let my photos sync. I pay for the storage on proton drive to _save_ space locally, but whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locall", "context": "Proton subscriber for years", "use_case": "photo sync and storage", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.3"}, {"id": 800475697, "item_id": 50029731, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029731", "by": "DavideNL", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "mount your Proton Drive with rclone", "excerpt": "Wait, you can mount your Proton Drive with rclone? Hah, never knew. It's in Beta apparently though: https://rclone.org/protondrive/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Proton Drive for Linux"}, {"id": 800442880, "item_id": 50027680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50027680", "by": "friedtofu", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proton Drive already has a CLI built with linux users in mind by the Proton AG team", "excerpt": "Proton Drive already has a CLI built with linux users in mind by the Proton AG team... https://proton.me/business/drive/cli https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-cli", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Proton Drive for Linux"}, {"id": 800003536, "item_id": 50000221, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000221", "by": "khaosdoctor", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I really needed to mount my Proton drive on my Linux machine the way I mounted it on my Mac", "excerpt": "Hello everyone, I wanted to share this small project that I have. It's born out of a necessity that I had, because Proton doesn't ship a Linux version of the drive yet (it's apparently coming out later this year but who knows?) and all the current solutions are hacky and wonky at best. But for the time being I really needed to mount my Proton drive on my Linux machine the way I mounted it on my Mac, so I (and my fait", "context": "Linux and Mac user", "use_case": "cloud storage mounted on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mounting Proton Drive in Linux Like in Other OS's"}, {"id": 792743590, "item_id": 49546474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "by": "TranquilMarmot", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "these usually just go into Proton Drive", "excerpt": "I have a server in a closet with a few hard drives attached to it. All of my devices connect to it via Tailscale. I use the wonderful https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest as a web UI around restic. Every night, I back the data up to a Hetzner storage box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ which is only ~$3.50/mo USD for 1TB of data. I have three \"tiers\" of data for myself: 1. Important things I care abo", "context": "", "use_case": "storing design documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 774088082, "item_id": 48380505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380505", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which has its own set of warts", "excerpt": "I temporarily moved from Fastmail to Proton Mail, but found several downsides: * Loading mails (especially when going quickly through them) has quite some latency. Possibly due to decrypting. * Search is pretty bad compared to Fastmail. * The keyboard shortcuts seem to never work correctly. So I went back to Fastmail for mail (we still use Proton Drive, which has its own set of warts).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"}, {"id": 772538946, "item_id": 48283684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48283684", "by": "microtonal", "date": "2026-05-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's worse in many ways, but at least it's E2E encrypted and doesn't shove upgrading ads in our faces all the time.", "excerpt": "All I care about is packrat and good syncing. For me that and end-to-end encryption (I know it's supported for teams now). Instead they just added more annoyances over time. Every time I logged into the web interface, I would get stupid upselling advertisements (maybe don't badger your paying users with that nonsense)? I replaced the official client by Maestral years ago, because they switched to embedding a web brow", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "Dropbox", "story": "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"}, {"id": 766557360, "item_id": 47909835, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909835", "by": "thom-gtdp", "date": "2026-04-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To send to other people: Proton drive", "excerpt": "To send to other people: Proton drive, to send to myself between devices: Whatsapp", "context": "", "use_case": "sending files to others", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What file sharing apps do you guys use?"}, {"id": 761999362, "item_id": 47624960, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624960", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "they don't have some core features like proper proton drive rsync support", "excerpt": "I once did some tinkering with Proton Docs and I was able to find that the comments within Proton Docs when I used it via curl definitely felt like it had something like logs (I feel like I should try doing this again to have more definitive answer) Either way, the response was encrypted but they hold the encryption key atleast within proton-docs. I also want to say that Proton allows the ability to change password t", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proton Meet Isn't What They Told You It Was"}, {"id": 745687442, "item_id": 46605465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605465", "by": "teekert", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Drive is nice", "excerpt": "I like the calendar, it deals well with all other providers. I like Pass, especially for sharing credentials in the family. Drive is nice, although I switched to Immich. I use the VPN a lot too.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proton Lumo 1.3: Introducing Projects, a better way to organize and create"}, {"id": 736878688, "item_id": 46054918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46054918", "by": "d3Xt3r", "date": "2025-11-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "There's also the controversy around the CEO", "excerpt": "There's also the controversy around the CEO: https://blog.joyrex.net/moving-on-from-proton", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd"}, {"id": 736442208, "item_id": 46027638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027638", "by": "aborsy", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Sure, but you don\u2019t need to pay a premium for end to end encryption like with proton. You would encrypt (all or part of) your NAS client side with your software of choice (I use restic) and ship it anywhere off site: could be cheapest cloud, or another location you have access to.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd"}, {"id": 736419552, "item_id": 46026222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026222", "by": "zacwest", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "They are working on an SDK, which they will use for their own Linux client", "excerpt": "They are working on an SDK, which they will use for their own Linux client: https://proton.me/blog/proton-drive-sdk-preview", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd"}, {"id": 736414097, "item_id": 46025881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46025881", "by": "augusto-moura", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Proton, AFAIK, doesn't provide documented official APIs for accessing their Drive.", "excerpt": "Support for proton drive on rclone is still on beta [1], Proton, AFAIK, doesn't provide documented official APIs for accessing their Drive. Much of the work on the rclone plugin was made via reverse engineering and reading Proton's open source projects code [1]: https://rclone.org/protondrive/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mount Proton Drive on Linux using rclone and systemd"}]}