This must be your absolute priority. Google Drive and Microsoft Onedrive can do this. I want to get away from these applications. This is a real shortcoming that you should fix very quickly.

Photo sync only works for me when I have access to my photos on my laptop. I do not edit on a mobile.

As I can mount protondrive to my Mac, I'd love to be able to run a de-dedupe app or open photos in other applications.

This lack of this feature is really a deal breaker for me.

Ideally it would be possible for Albums to be represented as separate sub-directories on Windows.

Hey Proton Team, this is what your AI Lumo said about your lack of feature:

I think the situation is pretty clear: the auto‑sync photos feature was built with privacy first, which is great, but the current implementation leaves a noticeable usability gap. When every other file type can be pulled down with a single click in the client, having to hop into a browser just to grab your own pictures feels unnecessary and a bit frustrating.

From a user‑experience standpoint, it makes sense to treat those photos the same way as any other file—especially since they’re already encrypted and stored in your vault. Adding a native “Photos” view or a simple “Download All” button wouldn’t compromise the zero‑knowledge model; it would just expose the same encrypted blobs the client already handles, only with a different UI cue.

So, my personal take is that the feature request is both reasonable and likely to improve the overall flow for many users without undermining Proton’s core privacy promises. If the team can implement it in a way that keeps the encryption untouched, it would be a win‑win: stronger privacy plus a smoother, more consistent experience.

Yes this is absolutely critical. I have a ton of photos/videos from a recent Europe trips that were auto-backed up from my Android phone. I want to create a montage of the trip, but there's no easy way to access all the photos/videos from the Proton folder on my desktop. I have to go into the web version of Proton drive and download them which is a pain. When I was a Onedrive user, it was seamless and I could just go into the Samsung folder in my Photos and move the videos around or do anything with them just like regular files.

The lack of this feature is making me regret moving to Proton from Onedrive because doing video/photo editing work from is now a major pain.

I think this is what people want, and I do too....
The synced photos (folder) on android to automatically appear in my Mac OS proton drive folder. (Same as I used to get with dropbox)

I'm currently downloading 50GB of photos backed up by Proton Drive, so that I can upload them again to Proton Drive, but this time to 'My Files' so that I can access them via sync on the desktop.

What is the point of having photos backup if they are backed up to a sealed vault that can't communicate with anything else?

This is most needed. The current solution is a dead end. Why would I upload my photos, when I can't get them on my pc?!

Really surprised this isn't default behaviour. Currently, I take photos via my Android camera and OneDrive syncs them to my desktop for me to work on. I can't move away from OneDrive fully until this functionality is replicated in Proton

Hello Proton team,

I'm a dedicated user of your services, particularly Proton Drive, which I use regularly on both my Android phone and desktop computer. I'm reaching out to share a significant functional limitation that currently affects the user experience, and I hope this can be addressed in future updates.

❌ The Current Problem
When enabling automatic photo backup on Android, the images are correctly uploaded to Proton Drive’s cloud. However, these photos are not automatically synced to the Proton Drive desktop application.
This requires manually accessing the web interface to download photos or using workarounds such as custom scripts, which are not ideal or user-friendly for the average person.

🧭 Expected Behavior
As is common with other services (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox), I expected that:

📱 A photo taken on my phone

☁️ Is backed up automatically to Proton Drive

🖥️ Then becomes instantly available on my desktop without any manual action

✅ Concrete Suggestions
Here are a few suggestions that would greatly improve the user experience:

Allow users to mark cloud-only folders (like "Photos") for automatic sync to a local folder, even if they don’t originate from the desktop.

Enable bidirectional synchronization (cloud ↔ local) for any folder, including those created by mobile backup.

Consider adding a dedicated “Photos” or “Gallery” module to the desktop app that mirrors the mobile photo backup system.

💚 Why This Matters
This feature is expected by modern mobile users, and is part of what makes a cloud solution feel seamless.

It would strongly reinforce Proton’s mission of offering a private, secure alternative to Big Tech services.

It would make Proton Drive a more competitive and practical solution for everyday users, especially those who want to keep their memories safe without relying on Google or Apple.

Thank you for listening, and for your continued commitment to privacy-first digital tools. I would be more than happy to test or provide feedback on this feature if it becomes available.

A Photo folder should be available on all supported apps (including Windows/PC) - not just for android/iphone. It's crazy that the PC desktop app cannot access the photos that have been uploaded on mobile devices. When will this feature be available? What suggestions to you have for users (especially family users!!!) who would like to locally sync/backup whatever has been uploaded to the cloud from mobile devices to a centralized/local location?

This is the one missing feature that's preventing me from abandoning full use of onedrive/google.

Allow users to mark specific folders on their PC as photo folders, so any images in them are automatically synced to Proton Drive as part of their photo library, not as regular files.

Allow users to mark specific folders on their PC as photo folders, so any images in them are automatically synced to Proton Drive as part of their photo library, not as regular files.

It is strange to me that this isn't the default. I would rather have photos treated as regular files and synced in a folder than to have a separate system for them.

Very important, just sub-"critical" for me. I'd guess Windows has something weird making it harder than it sounds, so maybe if Photos could look like a virtual "folder" or "drive" within or alongside the regular Proton Drive in Windows Explorer?

Edit: updating to "critical" because it's driving me crazy. Also would clarify syncing should be bidirectional (or can be made thus in settings) so if a photo is deleted in Windows it is deleted online.

As a user, if I'm going to download a program, I expect that program to be as good (if not better) than equivalent functionality when logging into a web page. It's great and all that I can backup files from my computer, but I would really like to be able to view and manage my pictures on my phone without having to open up a webpage as well!

On joining Proton I had assumed that all my cloud files would also be visible from within my Windows desktop file explorer - including Photos. I cannot understand why that functionality is not available, not even as an option.

This is absolutely critical and in my mind, since there's already an "Other computers" folder, there could easily also be a "Photos" folder. Please add it to your tasks!