I just signed up for proton and uploaded my photos. I was disappointed that there isn't a linux drive client, so I can't really get my photos back out on my main computer. Now this post is basically telling me there isn't a mac client either. I can't imagine who's paying for and backing up hundreds of gigs of data in a proton drive without photos -- drive client without photo access seems kind of pointless? Without a drive client I may not be able to renew, though I've already pre-paid for a year.

I synced my photos to Proton Drive, but can only access them from the app or the browser. It would be really useful to see them in the Proton Drive Files to easy watch, sort, edit and delete them.

Yes this seems like a glaring omission.
I don't for the life of me understand why "Photo's" appears to be some kind of seperate storage and is not just a folder on your Proton drive.
It's not really a backup if I can't take my data back out...

This is the ONE feature I am missing in Drive (along with "sending a file to Proton Drive" on iOS) to really make the transition from Dropbox to Proton bearable...

I recently transitioned from OneDrive to Proton Drive and have been extremely happy with the experience so far. I now rely on Proton Drive more than my locally hosted NextCloud instance, primarily due to long-term cost efficiency and the mitigation of hardware failure risks.

That said, I do have a suggestion for improvement: it would be great to see better photo sync features across platforms. Currently, photos backed up from an Android phone don’t sync with the Windows app. And the photo folder is not shown on the windows drive app. Leading to duplicates and insuficient storage managment

Yes please this is a gap that needs to be filled. I was using OneDrive before trying Proton and the OneDrive desktop app presents photo access along with everything else.

This should be a #1 priority.

the photos folder should be like any folder

Very important feature for someone who wants to categorise, filter, sort, group, etc. their photos with an app on the pc, like digiKam. One thing to take into account in this, is the sync/backup semantics. What happens if I change some attributes of a picture (e.g. marking it as a favorite) on the phone after the backup/sync of these photos, changes will probably not pe propagated to the desktop; and what happens if I change some attibutes on the desktop. They won`t propagate back to the phone. I would prefer a sync of the photos between the cloud and the phone and the cloud and the desktop. Of course, this then is not a backup, so backup functionality should be realized by saving versions of the pictures with the possibility of going back in time for the whole foto repository. Of Course, then some other questions arise, e.g. how would I delete photos from the phone, e.g. to save space, without deleting them from the repository (the cloud and the desktop). It's not trivial at all. For now I would be happy with the possibiltiy of a sync of the fotos between proton cloud and desktop in both directions. Some clear statements would be necessary, whicht changes are propagated to which side and how this would influence the backup from the phone to the cloud (I miss these statements, or I at least haven't found them, about the current backup mechanism for the fotos backup anyway)

I was extremely surprized that I can not move my photos that were synced from android to an existing folder in Proton Drive. So basically when you take photos you usually want to sort them and it is not possible...

and syncing with mac OS desktop photos app library, too

I would die to understand why they made this design choice. It's impossible to find photos in the ****** web UI photo viewer. That thing only works if you have very little photos, which is not the case for anybody in the year 2024.

PLEASE make the photos available as files in a folder for Desktop clients. Maybe take a look at OneDrive to get a feel for the baseline level of quality.

Having a local desktop folder which syncs all the photos on Proton Drive (just like the other Drive files) would give me a reassuring feeling when the photos are backed up on two places.

This would be a game changer for storing my photos on mobile

Emailed them about it already, this was the response

"2) It would be nice if there is a dedicated folder on the windows sync to directly view photos, or some other integration so that you can view them locally without having to use the webapp

Kindly note that at the moment, the Photos section is not available on the Proton Drive desktop apps, however, this was already requested from our developers and we will add your vote towards this request."

Adding my vote for this.

Deal breaker

I would really like a way to get my photos synced to my computer because at the moment the files are getting uploaded at full resolution with no option for compression. This consumes a significant amount of drive space. If i can sync the photos to my computer I can choose if i want to compress them or leave them at full resolution.

Would love the ability to automatically upload from certain folders. For example, if I take a screenshot in Firefox and it saves to downloads, proton photos auto uploads that and I can show someone on my phone if I'm away from my computer.

And if possible, sync the date modified to the date that the images were taken, rather than the date of the sync.