Proton: Proton Drive got faster and easier to use in early 2026

General
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Early this year, Proton Drive delivered up to 60% faster uploads on iOS, as well as up to 30% faster uploads and 70% faster downloads on web. Shared workflows have improved too: Downloading shared files is now 70% faster, and uploading to a shared folder is 30% faster, even for people without a Proton account.

We’ve been rebuilding some of Drive’s most performance-intensive code into a shared SDK that powers core file operations across our apps.

  • The photo gallery has improved on iOS and Android, with quicker loading and smoother scrolling through your memories.
  • Saving files directly to Proton Drive is now possible on both Android and iOS, making it easier to save something for later without first downloading it and uploading it again.
  • Document scanning is now supported on both Android and iOS, so you can easily save important scans like passports directly in Proton Drive for safekeeping.
  • On Android, you can upload entire folders to Proton Drive, making it much faster to move lots of files in one go. That’s something even Google Drive doesn’t offer.

[W]e’ve added and improved support for workflows people expect from modern spreadsheets, including:

  • Import, edit, and export spreadsheets as ODS (compatible with OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and others). Currently in beta
  • Hidden sheets
  • New paste special options: formula only and link only
  • Custom formulas in conditional formatting and data validation
  • Support for the =SWITCH formula
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The real question is, when it will be available on Linux

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They’ve been mentioning this for so long now that I just expect them to never release it. Hopefully its different now. This is the most concrete comment they’ve provided about linux in their blogs

we haven’t lost sight of our broader priorities for 2026, including the long-awaited Linux client

with “broader priorities” being this

Over the course of 2026, we’ll migrate all existing Proton Drive features to the SDK, and build all new features on top of it.

Our priorities are to:

  • Complete the SDK rollout across all Proton Drive clients, so the desktop, mobile, and web apps use the same codebase.
  • Upgrade Drive’s encryption algorithms to use on‑device hardware acceleration, delivering faster operations while reducing CPU usage.
  • Add the still-missing Drive features to the SDK, starting with Photos uploads and downloads, file sharing, devices, and file revisions.
  • Gradually move toward a single, well‑documented integration path that third‑party apps can rely on.
  • Build a Linux client using the SDK, which speeds up development and keeps it consistent with the other Proton Drive clients

Looks like linux is at the very bottom of priorities lol, maybe it’ll release early 2027 if not late 2026.

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This post felt weird. Like what do they want, a congratulation gift ?

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One of my most waitet feature. Because microslop formats can break when you use it on yours lible machine (mostly formatting breaks).

For me who never used trackdows (windows) in my entire life, supporting formats that works properly on Linux is critical.

But I still pretty annoyed that Proton still doesn’t have drive for Linux

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I think they’re just letting the community know, and try to reach people such as myself. I’m a visionary user, but Proton Drive has been so notoriously abysmal for so long, I don’t bother even using it. But they have made some pretty significant improvements, and after checking it out, the web version at least is like a night and day compared to what it once was. So I think this was a friendly reminder. Which was definitely needed because otherwise I most certainly would’ve never known.

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For me Proton Drive used to struggle to even upload and download small files, but now I can upload hundreds to thousands of smaller files and some larger files without issue (and same goes for downloading)

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Drive is, imo, a prolonged & well-tested beta. Call it a ‘charlie’. It does not yet meet the standard of quality Steve Jobs would demand before a public release

I am admittedly still frustrated that Play Store is the only reliable installation source for Android

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Have you tried using crowdsourced configuration on obtainium? Has worked well for me.

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They posted a job last week that is relevant to Proton Drive (Linux). Note it states:

Linux desktop application development (GTK+ or Qt)

GTK+ and Qt are large cross-platform frameworks and it takes time to be proficient. So I think they have not yet decided which framework they’ll use for GUI, otherwise they would have just specified one framework in the job description.

Their platform-agnostic SDK might speed-up development. So perhaps one year from now if no major problems arise.

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Just give us a CLI. I don’t care about a nice GUI app, I just want something to do automatic backups of select folders.

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While this good for tech-savy people (like us) it can scare out newbies from switching to Linux, so it better to have both CLI and GUI.

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I hadn’t realised this, so I tested it last night and it’s much, much faster than previous.

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