Proton Drive: Cloud Storage

I don’t know what it is about this app specifically that the developers just can’t get to work properly, but this app has been a massive letdown since I started using it over a year ago. At the time, I figured it was just needing a patch, which I had come to trust and expect, given my excellent experience with the rest of the Proton suite, but this app specifically performs absolutely abysmally even now, using the latest version, and seemingly hasn’t made any significant progress in terms of performance since I started using it. Everything from just loading into it to tapping on the files tab to simply opening a file I’ve already downloaded (!!!) is sluggish, messy process, and I can’t recommend using this app on mobile to anyone. The desktop version on both Mac and Windows works fine, and like I said, the rest of Proton’s apps on iOS work great, but this app on this platform specifically is a performance nightmare. I’m not using a particularly old device or iOS version either. I’m running the latest version of the app on iOS 18.5 on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Please do better Proton, I thoroughly enjoy using these apps, and I hope this app can be brought up to the level of quality and UX that I’ve come to expect from the rest of the apps.

There’s a tradeoff you need to accept when switching from something like Google Drive to Proton Drive. Proton Drive has end-to-end encryption, thus Proton can’t read any of your data. Google Drive, for example, grants Google almost limitless access to read your files. For the privacy-minded, Proton Drive is the obvious choice. But encryption introduces major limits on iOS. Most problematically, you cannot search for files. Not even by file name. There is currently no search at all on the Proton Drive iOS app. This is a major deficiency when comparing the app to competing services. Again, this is currently the tradeoff one has to be willing to make in order to gain privacy, but what a massive tradeoff it is. For those of you who have a lot of files and perhaps aren’t disciplined in your folder structures, you will have a very challenging time locating your files while on your mobile device. I implore the team at Proton to develop a solution to this if you want to pull users away from the competition. Search is a table stakes feature that is inexcusably omitted from the product. I so badly want to permanently move off of Google Drive, but I can’t in good conscience do so until there’s a reasonably good way of locating my files on the go.

Encryption of our data at rest is essential for privacy. Proton Drive has a lot of important potential for the broader security-minded community. To add a more seamless UX I would recommend the following: - Allow “sharing” of files, photos, and the Notes App directly to Proton Drive. If I could long press and save a file directly from my browser to Proton Drive, that would offer a more seamless experience. - Allow uploading all attachments in an email to Proton Drive. This should especially be a feature for ProtonMail. - Improve ability to bulk upload iCloud Photos to Proton Drive, or even automatically sync. I understand this is a difficult ask. - Refine the capability of creating whitelisted “groups” to view shared folders. You could add two levels of security by both requiring them to access via their Proton account and then also requiring an admin-set email to read/write. - Improved “out of Proton” sharing of files and folders. ProtonMail on desktop does this effectively. - Bulk imports and exports. - Ability to create “rules” for automatic archiving of documents. If I receive X containing <these words> to my ProtonMail email, then save attachment and email to <this file structure>. I have to catalog a lot of travel receipts for work travel, for example. This would help with that. Overall, love that Proton Drive is making headway on this important project and I wish the devs continued success down the stretch.