Introducing Docs in Proton Drive – collaborative document editing

Just launched:

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Not available on Android, yet :confused:

“We are rolling out Docs starting today, and the feature will be available to all users over the next couple of days.”

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Anyone know when and how they will open source this new feature/product?

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wow. this is huge for a lot of people. exciting!

Seems to be only for Word files though, no spreadsheets for example…

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I’m surprised of this sentence. That’s a strong will of commitement. :grinning:

Best of all, it’s all private — even keystrokes and cursor movements are encrypted.

If I write something in docx, does microsoft owns it? :thinking:

(Proton drive saves in docx?)

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They do not store documents in docx. Not sure where you got that from. And no microsoft doesn’t own documents you make in docx. Docx is nothing more than a zip of ms-xml files and folders.

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No. Technically .docx is an open format iirc

Holy ——— this is huge. Looks like I can’t use it yet (using the web app), but once I can, I will be playing around with it to see if it fits my use case.

I really hope they also consider a digital notebook type of service like Obsidian (though maybe this new service is it, will edit if this is the case or not once I can use it). I know that they joined forces with Standard Notes, but I’d like to see a native Proton service so that it could be integrated with other Proton services like Drive.

For now, though, I am simply using Obsidian locally and syncing it with Syncthing.

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Unstructured review:

It would be huge if they figure out a way to import google docs somehow. I am expecting they will do docx in a simliar way google does.

nice is the export option for md:
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something annoying is that they do not use the display name for comments. But rather the first part of the emailadres. This isn’t really helpful.

The table feature they nailed. It’s almost exactly how I would want it. So simple to add and delete rows, columns, change the style, add a index column or row or remove them. One cannot color a single cell. Only rows and columns and when doing so it also colors the header column/row which is undesirable.

syntax highlighting in code is available but still limited.

Given the features I have a strong suspicion this is all markdown in the background, Which is a good thing.

Adding pictures can only be done from the local machine or URL there is no way to add pictures from proton drive itself, which is a shame. Also wonder where it holds the pictures you upload to the document.

There is no sharing via a public link. which is a pitty. That is a really useful feature. You can only share with collaborators/viewers via email.

I miss a reviewer option in the sharing. Aka someone that can view and place comments. A normal viewer should not be able to spam comments. I guess this isn’t an issue now because you can’t share the document pubically (yet).

The fonts are pretty limited. Would be nice if a user can upload their own fonts to use. Especially for businesses that would probably a huge benefit. Word is pretty bad at using other fonts online. This is more a nice to have, but more fonts are welcome.

Print removes all colors from the text.

It’s unclear when it creates a version in the version history. Is this per day? It would probably makes sense do to this more often.

Overall this works really well, surely will be using it. Although i am not much of a static document person.

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They built Proton Docs with the help of the Standard Notes team, so I really wonder if people with the Proton Unlimited plan will get access to Standard Notes.

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when i asked about that last month there were no plans for that yet. But who knows.

actually one thing is missing here. One cannot color a single cell. Only rows and columns and when doing so it also colors the header column/row which is undesirable.

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Cryptpad.fr already has great collaborative spreadsheets. As Easy to uss as Google Sheets, and fully privacy (as vetted by Privacy Guides)

Edit: Tested docs.proton.me right now, see @ph00lt0 for a detailed review. I just want to add two things. 1) The interface is very polished and minimalistic 2) that people without a Proton account can’t edit it even if you add their email. At least that’s what I noticed using a temporary mail as a authorised editor. Mail didn’t contain any “Accept invitation”.

Not true for text colors (on Tor Browser). But for background color, you need to enable the “Print backgrounds” on the Print page. Now I do agree that this isn’t standard behavior, most users will not see this and then say “it’s buggy”.


Thank you again for Proton & Standard Notes for delivering so quickly ! You guys are amazing, not sure where we will be without you :wink:

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Looks like I can’t edit my comment anymore, so a reply will have to do. Anyway, I was able to play around with Proton Docs. Here are my thoughts from a notetaking perspective:

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Figure 1.1

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Figure 1.2

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Figure 1.3

  • I dislike how you cannot edit a file directly. I uploaded a testing markdown file to Drive, and upon trying to edit it in Docs, Proton created an entire copy of the file instead (see Figure 1.1).
  • Editing the document in Docs also does not update the markdown file in Drive, so you would have to download the file again (though, the term “export” makes more sense here). This means that if you want to maintain a seamless digital notebook system in Proton Docs where you can continue editing and whatnot, it would have to remain in Drive and as their specific Docs file type (see Figure 1.2).
  • What these two ultimately lead to is that if you have a local notebook system like mine where you edit local files, and you’d like to transfer it to Docs, you’d have to “Open in Docs” each individual file (see Figure 1.3). For those who take lots of notes and have many files, this will be tiresome, especially given the fact that the original uploaded files themselves are not even updated. You would essentially be duplicating your entire notebook rather than editing it live.
  • Another issue I have is that when you rename a file from the Docs editor page and download it from there, the downloaded file still has the old file name. To get the new name, you would have to refresh Drive and download it from there, or (close the Docs editor page and) re-open it in Docs and download it from there.
  • Exporting is only possible through the Dogs page. Trying to download it from the Drive page opens up Docs (but the export functionality is not automatically popped up, which is odd).
    • Because of this, bulk exporting is not possible. You’d have to individually open up each document into the Docs editor and export it from there.

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Figure 2.1

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Figure 2.2

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Figure 2.3

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Figure 2.4

  • Docs is also much more rich text-friendly as opposed to markdown-friendly as far as I can tell, but I am not an expert. I dislike this because I prefer markdown.
  • Pressing enter for a line break in Docs actually leads to a paragraph break (see Figure 2.1), which I guess is more akin to Google Docs/Microsoft Word so I can’t criticize that. It’s also arguably more efficient since I do not have to press enter twice for a paragraph break, and especially since line breaks are the odd one out compared to paragraph breaks in markdown. The exported markdown file saves these breaks (see Figure 2.2) so it’s just a matter of changing one’s typing behavior (which some might find annoying).
  • At the end of the day, I do prefer the plaintext editing style of when pressing enter is simply a line break and pressing it twice would be a paragraph break (see Figure 2.3). I’m used to it, and I prefer editing my markdown files from source as opposed to a “live preview” of sorts. Maybe the Docs team can have a “Source mode” preference (like Obsidian) where it treats the layout like a mix of a plaintext editor and a semi-live preview (see Figure 2.4). Regardless, the Docs editor is still somewhat of a decent compromise for markdown editing considering one of the export options include .docx, just overall not for notebooking.

Here are some features I would like, but is not as necessary compared the issues I mentioned above:

  • Dark mode would be cool
  • Linking Drive files inside documents via the link syntax would make a digital notebook system more seamless. I’m imagining something akin to this: ![](~/proton/drive/path/to/image/). It looks like we can only add images from a local source.
    • However, this might be an obstacle for the sharing, encryption, and export functionalities. I can’t imagine how linking documents from our personal Drive would work with these three.
    • This is sort of why I wish we’d have a proper Proton notebook service that is integrated with the other services. Perhaps it’s not really needed here in Docs.
  • I like how you can edit the document irrespective of changing its location in Drive mid-edit, but I would also like the ability to change the location of it in the Docs editor page.
  • Bulk export is not supported “currently”, so hopefully it will come as a feature in the future.

Final choice: I will not be using this as my personal digital notebook. It’s easy to ignore the differences between the Docs editor and the average markdown editor, but I very much dislike the fact that I cannot edit my files directly. I would have to individually open up each of my markdown files into the Docs editor page, which would create a duplicate of it in Drive and turn it into a Proton Docs file type (not sure what that filetype is, though). The changes are also not reflected in the uploaded file and only the duplicate. Exporting is the only possible way currently to download it again to somewhere local, and bulk exporting is not possible, consequently meaning that I would have to also individually export the duplicates back into markdown. Therefore, there’s no reason for me to use this as a notebook service unless I stick with it, which I will not since I prefer my current notebooking system. It’s cool nonetheless that the Proton and the Standard Notes team came up with this product. Hopefully it brings in new customers. The future is lookin’ a bit better.

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Four days later, it still isn’t available on Android :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I don’t think it will be available on Android anytime soon.

They responded like this:

Hi! You can already see your documents in our mobile apps, so be sure to update to the latest versions. However, editing directly from the mobile apps is not supported and you will be redirected to the web client.

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That’s a big disappointment.