Proton Drive for Linux

Files-on-demand Proton Drive for the Linux desktop — a FUSE virtual mount with block-level caching, a scriptable CLI, and a native GTK4 app with tray and search launcher.

Important

This is an unofficial, community-built client. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Proton AG. "Proton" and "Proton Drive" are trademarks of Proton AG, used here only to describe what the software talks to. Use a test account first, and read docs/RECOVERY.md before trusting it with data you cannot lose.

Install

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install ./proton-drive-linux_*.deb

# Fedora
sudo dnf install ./proton-drive-linux-*.rpm

# Arch Linux (AUR)
paru -S proton-drive-for-linux        # or -git / -bin

Packages for each release are attached to the latest release; see Installation & Packages for details and Building from Source to compile it yourself.

pdfs login          # sign in (SRP + 2FA, credentials go to the system keyring)
pdfs status         # mount state, queued writes, cache usage
pdfs-app            # the desktop app

Contents

• Features · Quick search · Opening files
• Selective sync · Diagnostics · Scripting
• Performance · Filesystem safety · Screenshots
• Prerequisites · Building · Packages · Releases

Documentation: Architecture · Testing · Recovery · Development · Translating · Known issues · Changelog · Contributing · Security policy

Features

• Files-on-Demand (FUSE): Mount your Proton Drive as a virtual filesystem where files are downloaded only when opened, utilizing smart block-level caching and disk-backed writes.
• Command-Line Interface (CLI): Manage your drive, authenticate, and monitor sync status directly from the terminal.
• Non-Blocking GTK4 Desktop App: Browse files, manage pins, configure options, and monitor active transfers through a modern, native GUI with a fully non-blocking asynchronous main loop.
• File Thumbnails: Browse locally cached image previews in Files, Shared, and Trash, including embedded previews from camera RAW files. Build a whole folder tree from the Files toolbar and resize the grid from the status bar.
• Shared Links & Invites: Browse files shared with you by other users, and view/manage your own public shared links directly in the GUI.
• Local Backup (Computers): Sync and back up local directories (like Downloads, Documents, Pictures, etc.) directly to your Proton Drive account.
• Locations: One page (and pdfs locations) listing every place Proton Drive occupies on this machine — the main mount plus each backed-up folder — with its mode, sync state, and whether it is read-only. Switching a folder between a full local copy and on-demand happens here.
• System Tray Integration: Background indicator for status monitoring, quick actions, and fast sync controls.
• Unified Search Launcher (HUD): A resident Google Drive-style launcher (pdfs-prompt) that searches Proton Drive and local files together, ranks the best matches, tolerates abbreviations and typos, and is ideal for a system-wide hotkey. It can also present the same search in your own launcher (--dmenu) or, searching live as you type, in fzf (--fzf).
• Secure Credential Storage: Integrates with the system Secret Service (GNOME Keyring, KWallet, etc.) with smart in-memory credential caching to avoid UI thread blockages.
• Proton Photos Support: Access your Proton Photos timeline, view thumbnails, and download backed-up media natively (available in the GUI as a navigation tab and via the CLI).
• File Version History: Every revision Proton Drive still holds for a file, from the browser's details pane (Versions) or pdfs versions list|restore|save|rm. Restoring is server-side — no re-upload — and an old version can be written out to a local file without touching the live one.
• Photo Favourites: Star a photo in the lightbox, filter the gallery to favourites, or use pdfs favorite <uid> / pdfs photos --favorites.
• Photo Albums: Browse your albums — including the ones shared with you — from the Albums view of the Photos page, or with pdfs albums / pdfs album <uid>. Album contents open in the same gallery as the timeline.
• Places: The Places view of the Photos page groups photos by the town they were taken in, using the location stored with each photo, as cards or on a world map. Towns are looked up offline in GeoNames data (CC BY 4.0), and the map is drawn offline from Natural Earth land outlines and country borders (public domain). Each town is marked with one of its photos, and zoomed in, every photo sits where it was taken. A street map from OpenFreeMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) can be turned on under Appearance; it is off by default because the tile server learns which parts of the world you look at. Install iso-codes for country names in your language.
• Human Verification (CAPTCHA) Recovery: Detects sign-in gates (VPN/new IP challenges) and launches an embedded WebKitWebView dialog to safely complete the challenge, transparently retrying authentication with the earned token.
• Selective Sync (.pdfsignore): Keep build trees, dependency directories, and editor leftovers out of synced folders using gitignore-style rules.
• Data-Safe Offline Writes: Durable scratch/staging files and a transactional pending queue preserve acknowledged writes across network failures and restarts.

Quick Search and Media Opening

pdfs-prompt searches Drive metadata and the local home-directory index in one request. Results are ranked together rather than split by source. Matching is case-insensitive and supports exact names, prefixes, parent paths, multiple terms, punctuation-separated words, ordered abbreviations, common typos, and adjacent transpositions.

The prompt stays resident after its first launch, so invoking the shortcut again reuses and resets the existing window. Drive folders open from the mount. Audio and video results also open through FUSE, allowing media players to seek and request ranges without downloading the entire file first; ordinary Drive files are materialized into the local cache before opening.

Using your own launcher (fuzzel, rofi, wofi, …)

pdfs-prompt --dmenu runs the same search through an external dmenu-style launcher instead of the built-in window, so the HUD matches the rest of a tiling-WM desktop:

pdfs-prompt --dmenu                                   # fuzzel/rofi/wofi/tofi/bemenu/dmenu, whichever is installed
pdfs-prompt --dmenu --menu 'fuzzel --dmenu --width 60'
pdfs-prompt --dmenu --query invoice                   # skip straight to a search

A launcher filters a fixed list — it cannot ask for a new one per keystroke — so searching takes two steps, and the prompt says which step you are on:

• Search Drive › lists your pinned files. Type anything that isn't one of them and press Enter to search for it.
• Drive: invoice › lists the results. Enter opens one; typing something else and pressing Enter searches again. Escape closes.

--query skips the first step. fuzzel and rofi also get file-type icons.

To make an existing keybinding use it without re-binding, and to pin the launcher command, set them in config.json:

{
  "prompt": {
    "mode": "dmenu",
    "menu": ["fuzzel", "--dmenu", "--width", "60"],
    "menu_limit": 50
  }
}

--gtk overrides "mode": "dmenu" for one invocation. A {prompt} token anywhere in menu is replaced by the prompt text; without one, the launcher's own prompt flag is appended.

Live launcher search (fzf)

The two-step above exists because no dmenu-style launcher can call back for new results per keystroke. fzf can, so pdfs-prompt --fzf searches as you type, exactly like the built-in window:

pdfs-prompt --fzf                    # pinned files, then live results as you type
pdfs-prompt --fzf --query invoice    # start on a search

Every keystroke re-queries the daemon (debounced, like the GTK prompt) and fzf's own matcher is switched off, so the ordering you see is the daemon's ranking — abbreviations and typos included, which a launcher filtering a fixed list cannot do. Enter opens; Escape closes.

fzf is a terminal program, so when it is started without one — from a WM keybinding — it spawns a terminal for itself: foot, ghostty, kitty, alacritty, wezterm or xterm, whichever is installed. Each is launched with the app-id/class pdfs-prompt, so one window rule floats it whichever terminal you have. In Hyprland:

windowrulev2 = float, class:^(pdfs-prompt)$
windowrulev2 = size 900 500, class:^(pdfs-prompt)$
windowrulev2 = center, class:^(pdfs-prompt)$
bind = SUPER, space, exec, pdfs-prompt --fzf

Set it as the default front end, and pick the terminal explicitly, in config.json:

{
  "prompt": {
    "mode": "fzf",
    "terminal": ["foot", "--app-id=pdfs-prompt", "--"],
    "menu_limit": 50
  }
}

A {cmd} token anywhere in terminal is replaced by the command to run; without one it is appended, which is what every detected terminal expects.

Choosing How Files Open

By default every result is handed to xdg-open. An open_with block in config.json overrides that per file type — for instance opening text in Neovim inside Alacritty, while everything else still goes to the desktop:

{
  "open_with": {
    "terminal": ["alacritty", "-e"],
    "rules": [
      { "match": ["@text"], "command": ["nvim"], "terminal": true },
      { "match": ["*.png", "*.jpg"], "command": ["imv"] }
    ]
  }
}

• match takes file-name globs (*.md, notes-*.txt) or the classes @dir, @text, @document, @image, @media, @any. First matching rule wins.
• command is argv, not a shell line. A {} token is replaced by the path; without one the path is appended. $VAR tokens expand from the environment, so ["$EDITOR"] follows your editor.
• "terminal": true wraps the command in terminal. When that is unset, the terminal comes from $PDFS_TERMINAL, then $TERMINAL, then the first known emulator on PATH; a bare name like TERMINAL=alacritty gains the right "run this" flag automatically.
• "default": [...] replaces xdg-open for everything unmatched.

The rules apply to the prompt (both front ends) and to the GTK browser, so a file opens the same way wherever it was picked. Patterns are matched against the Drive name — a downloaded file is stored in the cache under its content hash, which says nothing about its type, so matching that would send everything to xdg-open.

Selective Sync (.pdfsignore)

Two-way synced folders skip paths matched by ignore rules, so syncing a project directory does not upload node_modules/, target/, or .git/.

Rules come from two places, and both apply:

1. Per folder — a .pdfsignore file at the root of the synced folder (.protonignore also works). Gitignore syntax, including negation:

   # everything build-related
   build/
   *.log
   
   # ...except this one
   !important.log
   

2. Globally — an ignore_patterns list in config.json, applied to every synced folder. When unset, sensible defaults apply: .git/, .hg/, .svn/, node_modules/, target/, .venv/, __pycache__/, *~, *.swp, *.tmp, .DS_Store, and Thumbs.db.

   {
     "ignore_patterns": ["node_modules/", "target/", "*.iso"]
   }
   

   Set it to [] to opt out of the defaults entirely.

Rules are re-read at the start of every sync pass, so edits take effect on the next pass without restarting the daemon.

Ignoring is never destructive. If a rule starts matching a file that was already synced, its copy on Drive is left untouched — the file simply stops being tracked. Removing the rule later picks the existing remote file back up rather than re-uploading it.

Diagnostics & Maintenance

When something looks wrong, pdfs diagnose checks the installation and prints a report. It runs without a daemon on purpose — the state worth diagnosing is usually the state where the daemon will not start:

$ pdfs diagnose
Paths
[ok  ]   state dir: /home/you/.local/state/proton-drive-linux
[ok  ]   database: /home/you/.local/state/proton-drive-linux/cache.db (170.3 MiB)

Account
[ok  ]   keyring session: you@proton.me

Daemon
[ok  ]   daemon responding
[ok  ]   mounted at: /home/you/ProtonDrive
[ok  ]   queued writes: none

No problems found.

It exits non-zero if any check fails, so it works in a health-check script.

For the local metadata database and content cache:

Command	What it does
pdfs cache inspect	Database size, reclaimable space, per-table row counts, cache usage against budget
pdfs cache inspect --deep	Also runs SQLite's integrity check — reads every page, so it is slow on a large database
pdfs cache vacuum	Checkpoints the write-ahead log and compacts the database
pdfs cache clear	Deletes cached file content, keeping pinned files

vacuum takes a write lock for its duration and needs room for a second copy of the database while it runs, so it is a deliberate operation rather than something the daemon does on a timer.

Before a release, run the real-kernel acceptance suite against a dedicated test account and mount. See docs/TESTING.md; it includes optional two-mount convergence checks and confines destructive operations to a fresh test directory.

Scripting (--json)

Query commands accept a global --json flag and emit machine-readable output:

$ pdfs --json sync list | jq '.items[] | select(.state != "idle") | .local_path'
$ pdfs --json cache inspect | jq '.db_reclaimable_bytes'
$ pdfs --json status | jq -r '.mount.mountpoint'

Supported on status, ls, pins, sync list, devices list, transfers, activity, and cache inspect. Commands that perform an action keep their human output — a script that needs to know whether one worked has the exit code.

Two things worth relying on:

• The payload is unwrapped. Output is {"items": […]}, not the daemon's internal {"SyncFolders": {"items": […]}}, so scripts never name an internal variant.
• Errors still fail. A daemon-side error prints its JSON body (with a machine-readable kind) on stdout and exits non-zero, so set -e and if pdfs … behave as expected rather than treating a failed lookup as success.

Performance & Caching

The client includes several optimizations designed for high efficiency, a low memory footprint, and a responsive user experience:

• On-Demand Block Cache: Files are read in fixed 4 MiB blocks. For unpinned files, the client fetches and caches only the blocks containing the requested byte ranges. This enables fast sequential and sparse reads (e.g. media streaming or metadata scanning) without downloading entire files.
• Disk-Backed Writes: Large file writes are staged on disk in temporary scratch files (rather than fully buffered in RAM) and track modified byte intervals. Only the unedited remote segments are fetched at commit time, keeping memory usage minimal.
• Non-Blocking GTK4 Loop: To prevent UI freezes, all synchronous D-Bus credential checks, control socket requests, and cache usage calculations are offloaded to background worker threads or fetched asynchronously.
• Flicker-Free UI Rendering: The GTK4 application performs differential rendering of the pins list, only modifying list rows when the list content changes, preserving the user's scroll position and widget focus.
• Durable Staging: Scratch metadata and staged writes are synced and atomically published before an upload is acknowledged locally. Rapid revisions supersede pending work transactionally.

Filesystem Safety

Version 1.0 strengthens the boundaries around local-only data and destructive reconciliation:

• Truncate composes with queued revisions, preserving the authoritative prefix and correct zero-filled growth.
• Combined move-and-rename operations are queued durably and tolerate partially completed remote state.
• Session tombstones prevent successfully unlinked entries from reappearing through eventually consistent listings.
• Names are valid UTF-8 and no longer than Linux's 255-byte component limit.
• Incomplete mirror scans are non-destructive, and total-wipe protection covers every non-empty baseline.
• Failed conflict preservation, local deletion, or staging publication does not settle a new baseline or discard the only local copy.
• State, cache, and config directories must be real, current-user-owned 0700 directories; control sockets are 0600.

Screenshots

GUI Application & Launcher

Login Screen	Files Browser
Shared Links	Shared with me
Local Backups (Computers)	Photos Timeline
Search Launcher Prompt (GTK)	Search Launcher Prompt (fzf)
Activity	Settings

---

Prerequisites

To compile the application from source or run the built binaries, ensure you have the following system libraries installed on your distribution:

Ubuntu / Debian (24.04+)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
  pkg-config \
  libfuse3-dev \
  libgtk-4-dev \
  libadwaita-1-dev \
  libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev \
  libsecret-1-dev \
  libdbus-1-dev \
  libimage-exiftool-perl

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S --needed pkgconf fuse3 gtk4 libadwaita libsecret dbus webkitgtk-6.0 perl-image-exiftool

Fedora (44+)

sudo dnf install -y \
  pkgconf-pkg-config fuse3-devel gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel \
  webkitgtk6.0-devel libsecret-devel dbus-devel glib2-devel \
  perl-Image-ExifTool cargo rust

Runtime extras (pick your desktop):

# GNOME — keyring + tray (AppIndicator)
sudo dnf install -y gnome-keyring gnome-shell-extension-appindicator xdg-utils

# KDE Plasma — KWallet (Secret Service); tray works via built-in SNI
sudo dnf install -y kwallet xdg-utils

---

Building from Source

Ensure you have Rust and Cargo installed (minimum supported Rust version is 1.96).

1. Clone the repository and navigate into the project directory:

   git clone https://github.com/narrrl/proton-drive-linux.git
   cd proton-drive-linux
   

2. Build the workspace in release mode:

   cargo build --release --locked
   

The compiled binaries will be available under target/release/:

• pdfs: The CLI utility.
• pdfs-app: The GTK4 application.
• pdfs-tray: The tray status notifier.
• pdfs-prompt: The launcher prompt for quick HUD search.

---

Installation & Packages

1. Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

Install the debian package via dpkg or apt:

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

2. Arch Linux (AUR)

Three AUR packages cover the usual choices; they conflict with each other, so install one:

Package	Contents
proton-drive-for-linux	builds the latest tagged release from source
proton-drive-for-linux-git	builds main from git
proton-drive-for-linux-bin	installs the release binaries, no compile

paru -S proton-drive-for-linux        # or any AUR helper

The package sources live in packaging/aur/; see packaging/aur/README.md for how they are updated and published. A local PKGBUILD that compiles the working tree in place is still available for development builds:

cd packaging && makepkg -fi

3. Fedora (local RPM)

A local .spec is available under packaging/. From the repository root:

sudo dnf install -y rpm-build
rpmbuild -bb packaging/proton-drive-linux.spec \
  --define "git_dir $PWD" \
  --define "_rpmdir $PWD/packaging/out" \
  --define "_builddir $PWD/packaging/build" \
  --define "_sourcedir $PWD" \
  --define "_specdir $PWD/packaging" \
  --define "_srcrpmdir $PWD/packaging/out"
sudo dnf install packaging/out/x86_64/proton-drive-linux-*.rpm

---

Automated Releases (CI/CD)

This project has a GitHub Actions CI workflow configured under .github/workflows/release.yml.

How it works:

1. Triggers:
   • Pushing a git tag matching v* (e.g. git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0).
   • Manual runs via the Actions tab in GitHub (workflow_dispatch).
2. Quality Gates and Build Process:
   • For tagged builds, verifies that the tag, workspace version, and packaging/PKGBUILD version agree.
   • Runs cargo fmt, Clippy with warnings denied, the locked workspace test suite, and the account-free FUSE acceptance contract.
   • Spawns an Ubuntu runner and installs GTK4, Libadwaita, FUSE3, and Secret Service packages.
   • Sets up the Rust compiler and caches build targets to speed up runs.
   • Compiles the workspace members in release mode.
3. Artifact Packaging:
   • Generates a .tar.gz containing the raw binaries (pdfs, pdfs-app, pdfs-tray, pdfs-prompt).
   • Packs them into Debian (.deb) and Fedora (.rpm) packages.
   • Includes the systemd user service and tray autostart entry in the Debian package.
4. Publishing:
   • Creates a GitHub Release matching the pushed tag and uploads the .deb, .rpm, and .tar.gz packages as release assets.
   • For manual runs, compiles and exposes the packages as workflow run artifacts for testing.

---

Contributing

Bug reports, packaging fixes, and patches are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow and the quality gates CI enforces, and SECURITY.md for reporting a vulnerability privately.

The app, tray and search prompt are available in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese. docs/TRANSLATING.md explains how to improve a translation or add a language.

License

Released under the MIT License.

Proton Drive is a service of Proton AG. This project is an independent client and carries no affiliation with or endorsement from Proton AG.