Proton Drive for Linux
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Unofficial community client

Proton Drive on the Linux desktop.

Your files as a folder that downloads on demand, synced local folders, Photos, sharing, and a native GTK4 app with tray and search launcher, plus a scriptable CLI.

DownloadView on GitHub

Free and open source under the MIT License · packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and NixOS

My files in the Proton Drive for Linux app

End-to-end encrypted

Encrypted with your Proton keys before anything leaves the machine.

Native GTK4 app

Built with GTK4 and libadwaita, written in Rust.

8 languages

English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese.

MIT licensed

Every line is on GitHub. Bug reports, translations and patches are welcome.

Features

Everything you use Proton Drive for

Files, Photos and sharing, built into the Linux desktop and every program on it.

  • Your Drive as a folder

    ~/ProtonDrive works with every program. Files download when they are opened, a block at a time, so a video starts playing and a large archive can be read without fetching all of it.

  • Available offline

    Keep chosen files and folders fully downloaded. Everything else is cached within a size limit you set.

  • Synced folders

    Back up folders such as ~/Documents as a full two-way copy or online only, with ignore rules, conflict copies instead of overwrites, pause and bandwidth limits.

  • Local speed

    Making, renaming and deleting files returns at once, online or offline. Changes are staged on disk and queued before they are acknowledged, so they survive a lost connection, a crash or a reboot. A change Proton Drive refuses shows up at once, on the file too.

  • Photos

    Timeline with favorites, albums and Places on a map. RAW+JPEG pairs show as one photo, with a duplicate finder, slideshow and import from Google Photos Takeout.

  • Sharing

    Invite people as viewer, editor or admin, create public links with a password and expiry date, and accept invitations.

  • Tray and search launcher

    Status, pause and quick actions in the tray. pdfs-prompt searches Proton Drive and your home folder together, in its own window, through fuzzel, rofi or wofi, or live in fzf.

  • Scriptable command line

    About 55 pdfs commands cover files, sync, sharing, Photos, Trash, versions and diagnostics. Query commands print JSON with --json.

  • Several computers, one backup

    Continue a computer’s backup on a new machine and get its folders back in one step, or let two computers sync the same folders, deletions included.

  • Sync overview

    See what is uploading, what is waiting, what failed and why, and a history of what happened. A change Proton Drive refuses can be exported or discarded.

  • Browse with version history

    My files, Shared with me, Shared by me, Computers and Trash, with thumbnails including camera RAW, drag and drop, details and earlier versions of every file.

  • Update check, if you want it

    Turn it on in Preferences and the app asks GitHub once a day for a new release. It is off by default, and not offered where a package manager brings updates.

Screenshots

A closer look

Screenshots of the desktop app and the search launcher.

  • Photos timeline

  • Places on a mapMap data © OpenStreetMap contributors, GeoNames, Natural Earth

  • My files

  • Sync

  • Sync history with resolved conflicts

  • Computers

  • Search launcher

  • Search launcher in fzf

How it works

A background service holds your session, mounts ~/ProtonDrive through FUSE, runs the upload queue and the sync engine, and follows Proton’s event stream for changes made elsewhere.

  • One service, many front ends

    The app, the tray, the launcher and the CLI all talk to the same service, so they always show the same state.

  • Encrypted before upload

    Everything is encrypted with your Proton keys through a Rust implementation of Proton’s Drive SDK before it leaves the machine.

  • Honest about the trade-offs

    Files you open are decrypted into a local cache so programs can read them. The threat model explains what that means.

Read the security model

Install

Install

Packages for x86_64 come with every release. Other architectures build from source.

Fedora 44 or newer. Enable the COPR repository, and dnf upgrade keeps the app up to date:

sudo dnf copr enable narl-rs/proton-drive-linuxsudo dnf install proton-drive-linux

From the AUR, also available as -bin and -git:

paru -S proton-drive-for-linux

Ubuntu 24.04 or newer. Download the .deb from the latest release, then:

sudo apt install ./proton-drive-linux_*_amd64.deb

The repository is a flake. Add it as an input and enable the module, which also starts the service in every graphical session:

{  inputs.proton-drive-linux.url = "github:narrrl/proton-drive-linux";  outputs = { nixpkgs, proton-drive-linux, ... }: {    nixosConfigurations.<host> = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {      modules = [        proton-drive-linux.nixosModules.default        { services.proton-drive-linux.enable = true; }      ];    };  };}

Rust 1.96 or newer plus the GTK4, libadwaita, WebKitGTK 6, libsecret and FUSE 3 development packages.

git clone https://github.com/narrrl/proton-drive-linux.gitcd proton-drive-linuxcargo build --release --locked

Then open Proton Drive from your applications menu and sign in. The app starts the background service, and your files appear in ~/ProtonDrive.

Prefer a terminal? pdfs login stores the session, then enable the service once:

pdfs loginsystemctl --user enable --now proton-drive.servicepdfs status

Needs FUSE 3, GTK 4.12 with libadwaita 1.5, and a keyring such as GNOME Keyring, KWallet or KeePassXC.

Latest releaseCOPR repository AUR package Installation guide

Open source, built in the open

Proton Drive for Linux is a community project. Try it with data you have another copy of first, and read what survives a lost machine before you rely on it.