User Guide

How Proton Drive for Linux works and how to use it day to day. To install it, see Installation. If you are new, Getting started is the quicker read.

Topics

Page	What it covers
Files and offline access	The ~/ProtonDrive folder, keeping files available offline, the Trash, earlier versions
Synced folders	Backing up local folders, excluding files, changes waiting to upload, conflicts, pausing
Photos	Timeline, albums, places, duplicates, importing from Google Photos
Sharing	Invitations, public links, items shared with you
Computers	Other computers in your account, syncing several computers
Search launcher and tray	Finding files from a keyboard shortcut, the tray icon

Every command mentioned in these pages is listed in the command-line reference.

How it works

A background service, proton-drive.service, runs pdfs daemon. It holds your session, talks to Proton Drive, and shows your Drive as a folder. Everything else asks the service to do things:

Program	What it is
pdfs-app	The desktop app: files, photos, sharing, sync, preferences
pdfs-tray	Tray icon with status, pause and quick actions
pdfs-prompt	A search launcher for a keyboard shortcut
pdfs	The command-line client, for everything above and for scripts

Your files, file names and photos are end-to-end encrypted by Proton. To show them to you, the service decrypts them on this computer and keeps a cache, which is not encrypted. Use full-disk or home-folder encryption. The security model lists exactly what is stored.

Words used in the app

The app uses these words, and so do these pages:

Term	Meaning
My files	Everything in your Proton Drive, apart from Photos and computer backups
Proton Drive folder	Where My files appears on this computer, ~/ProtonDrive by default
Online only	A file or folder that downloads when you open it
Available offline	A file, or a folder with everything in it, kept on this computer
Synced folder	A local folder with a full copy on this computer, backed up to Proton Drive
Proton Drive service	The background service (proton-drive.service)

Preferences

Page	Settings
General	Start on login · Proton Drive folder location · upload and download limits · Proton theme, street map for Places, tray icon · language · check for updates
Storage	Cache size limit · clear the cache · files kept available offline

The account menu shows the storage you use and holds Sign Out…. Settings that are not in the app are described in Configuration.