Help with decision between Proton and Ente

Good day everyone,

TDLR: Newbie asking if it is worth it to dual subscribe to Ente exclusivly for photos with Proton Drive as cloud for different files, and best practise for storing F2A

First of all, this is my first post, and I’m not deep into privacy yet, so sorry if this post’s formating and writing is left to be desired. I am currently using a 2 year Proton Unlimited planplan, after I saw it’s band of features (which I like), after my old email program didn’t support f2a and started to get absolutely bombarded with ads despite adblock, and just started my Journey on reducing my footprint and incrssing my Privacy (I learned that that anonymity is a different thing), but especially of getting rid of google as much as possible.

As I saw in all the posts/comments I read through that people in here generally accept Proton, but in that lieu stumbled on Ente.

Now my question is, I used to use exclusivly google photos, which I want to ditch for obvious reasons. bit of a budget against too many subscriptions, do you guys think a phone’s internal gallery/photo app, coupled with Proton Drive is good enough (just noticed it has auto sync photos, thanks to the posts about “Proton Photo” here, or would you still recommend in investing into Ente for photo viewing and backup, as I enjoyed Google photos so much? I thought I better ask as I’m a bloody noob in these topics

In that lieu on why I came here first, Proton F2A is still good? I assume if I wanted to use it, I should store my Proton Code in another authentificator like Ente? Or is there another recommended app for it, or is Google Auth… fine? Never stored any f2a in the Proton Pass app myself.

I thought I better ask, because I didn’t find any posts of it in the recent months, other than just the really recent posts about Proton (I’m from the EU, so not sure what to make out of it)

Other than that I use FF. If anyone else has some recommendations or good ideas for some easy or convinient ideas, lemme know.

Thanks for reading through this badly written topic. My forum skills are insanely rusted in. If it has been discussed too much in the past, I can delete the post again if you want.

(Mostly using Proton’s Mail, passwort manager with Email Aliases, and now starting to use the drive to phase out my google drive)

Long story short, what’s your thoughts about Ente? Is it worth to subscribe to it ontop? Didn’t know how long or short I should keep the post

Also sorry in retrospect, I didn’t want to highjack and necro a random post, especially after not finding the specific ones anymore, and the wall of text.

Just a bit torn because so many people speak positivly about it, and if it’s worth to go dual subscription (Ente would be just for photos, and Proton for other files, if Ente can’t store them). VPN’s I mostly use to go around content blocks or just IP obscuring, if that even works (surface level detection or peer to peer)

Though through this post I see some old posts poppin up in the related topic tab

Oh yeah, 2FA indeed.
Thanks for bearing through my wall of text though, I could probably write it much shorter and contemplated on deleting it to repost it again. Probably didn’t help that I slept less than 2 hours

Luckily I don’t use the facial recognition tool, as I don’t really do any selfies, nor take pictures of people, so that is already a moot.Though I did like the UI of Google Photos and being able to search for topics which Ente was able to do too. But the 200GB on the lowest plan might be enough, and having 512 on proton.

Wasn’t aware that the 2FA codes in the seperate app were saved in the proton pass app, thanks for pointing it out!

The original idea was to move all my codes to proton Auth and the proton acc one elsewhere, but oh whelp. Switched to Firefox with ublock ages ago, and I really can’t look back

In my opinion, Proton Drive is not a viable photo management solution. It serves as a decent backup option but is clunky and hard to use to actually search or manage your library.

As @ctf said, if you can deal with making a couple additional step during your 2FA logins, using separate apps for passwords and 2FA is worth it because it provides additional security. Having 2FA in the same app as your passwords provides security against certain attacks, but also provides zero additional security against other attacks.

If you care about privacy at all, do not use Google Photos. It doesn’t matter what their privacy policy says, because they do not follow it. Avoid their products at all costs if you truly need privacy.

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Ah cheers!

Yeah looking back it wouldn’t even be that expensive as I’d save on cancelling the google one account and transition photos to Ente and the rest to Proton. And will keep the auth codes on a different ecosphere then. (they made it sound like the new proton auth and pass were 2 complete different things)!

Thanks, that helped a lot! Been using Samsung’s Gallery since getting this phone a week or two ago, and I recon they aren’t much better? Not sure tool wise though! Sorry for my half-sleep rambling mess

I did a review on Ente here: Ente Photos, a Privacy-first Photo App | Welcome to The Privacy Dad's Blog!

I use Ente just for photos and a combination of pCloud and Nextcloud (latter self-hosted) for everything else, and KeePass for passwords. I’m really happy with having a separate, dedicated photo app.

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if you selfhost , Immich is a great option

I’d recommend you use Ente over Proton Drive and Google Photos, Ente has good integration with Photos specifically compared to Proton Drive and is E2EE too, far better than Google Photos for privacy.

I’ve been using Ente since quite a long time, I can vouch for it :+1:

Imo both Proton Drive and Ente are great, but I try to diversify as much as possible. I’m currently using Ente for photos and Proton Drive for general files. Ideally I’d just use Proton for my email but the better privacy focused cloud providers are charging more than it’s worth for me when I don’t have many files/photos that need backing up in the first place.

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Oh yeah, thanks!

I also feel silly for stumbling through the whole website later not realizing it’s not just a forum. The sleep deprivation kicked hard. I’ll take a look and see how far I go, but I’ll definitly de-goolefy as much as possible.

But to Gopher; yeah I just use my native phone gallery now without syncing or backing up (doing it manual) and booted off photos after switching phones. The other option would be to continue using it and use the cloud strictly just for cloud.

Does it support all the modern fancy HDR stuff now? Saw till recently it didn’t.

Just saw the review and folders don’t seem to work? Would look like a bummer, if I decided to not just sync the camera roll

Maybe there is a way to make them work but after doing a test and seeing how it divides photos by time, I liked the simplicity of that system better. I do have some of my old folders intact, however, so I must’ve somehow imported those ones.

Oh yeah, I like by time too! I don’t really have any actual sorting myself, but I’d hate stuff of camera roll and stuff like other images I save getting thrown togheter. Happens on my tablet and it’s so annoying. I’m someone who screenshots half the stuff I see for me to remember later, or the occasional downloading of a memes, lol

Thank for the feedback, and also for the tip! Tuta is especially bad at constant AppImage updates, so I will try this out.