New unified Drive SDK powers dramatic speed gains across all platforms, with up to 2x faster downloads, 4x faster encryption, and a native Linux desktop app actively in development.
Proton today announced a sweeping technical overhaul of Proton Drive, its end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service. The update, powered by a new shared Drive SDK (software development kit), delivers the biggest performance leap in the product’s history and sets the stage for a native Proton Drive client on Linux — one of the most frequently requested features from the Proton community.
The rebuild replaces the previous per-platform codebase with a single, unified engine that handles uploading, downloading, encryption, and sync across web, iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. The result is dramatically improved performance that users will notice immediately.
“We’ve been focused on making end-to-end encrypted cloud storage faster, smoother, and more consistent everywhere you use it. To get there, we rebuilt Proton Drive around a stronger technical foundation: a single, shared engine that unifies all our cloud storage apps across platforms and powers all uploading, downloading, encryption, and more.”
— Anant Vijay Singh, Product Lead, Proton Drive
Performance Improvements at a Glance
The new Drive SDK delivers measurable, across-the-board speed gains:
Uploads up to 3x faster — common tasks such as Android photo backup and macOS file sync now complete significantly more quickly.
Downloads up to 2x faster — files and photos are accessible with substantially less waiting, including on mobile connections.
End-to-end encryption up to 4x faster — new files are encrypted at a fraction of the previous time, with reduced battery drain and heat on iOS and Android devices.
Smoother Photos experience — accelerated timeline scrolling and faster album and photo loading, even in large batches.
Proton emphasises that privacy is unchanged: no one but the user and their designated recipients can access stored files, including Proton itself.
Linux Client: Now Actively in Development
For years, the Linux community has been among Proton Drive’s most vocal advocates — and its most persistent requesters of a native desktop client. That request is now being answered. Proton has confirmed it is actively building a Proton Drive client for Linux, constructed from the ground up on top of the new SDK so that it benefits from all current and future performance improvements at launch.
“We’re also now actively building one of the community’s most-requested features: the Proton Drive client for Linux, built from the ground up to leverage the SDK.”
— Anant Vijay Singh, Product Lead, Proton Drive
No specific release date has been announced. Users interested in following progress or contributing feedback are encouraged to join the discussion on the Proton Drive subreddit or submit feature requests via UserVoice.
An Open Foundation for Third-Party Developers
The Proton Drive SDK is also available as an open preview on GitHub, allowing external developers to understand and build on the same engine that powers all Proton Drive clients. The SDK is already powering Proton Drive integration inside Lumo, Proton’s privacy-first AI assistant, enabling users to work with their documents in Lumo while keeping them protected by end-to-end encryption.
Over time, the SDK is intended to bring Proton Drive into deeper integration with the broader Proton ecosystem and to lower the barrier for third-party tools seeking to use Proton Drive for secure file storage and sharing.
Availability
The performance improvements are available now to all Proton Drive users across web, iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows via the latest app update. Proton Drive is free to use with 5 GB of storage; paid plans are available at proton.me/drive.