Photos bidirectional sync
It's great that one's photos can be "backed up". But, photos needs to have bidirectional syncing. An example: if one deletes a photo on one's phone, it should be deleted in Proton Drive/Photos. I applaud all of the wonderful improvements in Proton Drive/Photos, but to be fully functional this feature is needed. Of course, none of the features are available to Linux users as there is NO PROTON DRIVE CLIENT available for Linux.
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Geert
commented
This is one of the features that keeps me locked in to Onedrive and Samsung Gallery combination.
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Alexander
commented
That option needs to be implemented. Maybe just onedirectional. If they want users to actively use the drive they should make it an option to use the drive primarly. That if you delete a picture in the proton drive app it removes that picture on the device.
That way it saves a whole lot of hassle to delete pictures on the device and on the drive.
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Aled
commented
Agreed. Not even the Google Photos iOS app offers this functionality, so I wonder whether it's technically possible. If it is, it would give Proton Drive a feature that's sorely missing from Google Photos.
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Joakim Christensen
commented
I completely agree, there is a need for this type of synchronisation, but as mentioned in the comments section, it would be great if you could choose which ‘mode’ you want, whether it should be two-way sync or one-way.
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Shoobydowap
commented
I like that Proton Drive is backup, not bi-directional sync. The fact that this is NOT included in Proton Drive is one of the (admittedly few) things I like about it, so if ever implemented, I hope Proton will please make it an optional feature per folder, rather than an all/nothing option applied to all photos.
Use case: I want to get all photos off Apple iCloud* because I value my privacy - hence moving to Proton - so I'm hoping the current non-sync workflow will enable me to delete from phone, then sort / delete them on Proton Drive before moving to local storage and/or ingesting into an image editing app. Bi-directional syncing (like iCloud) prevents this, because once it's deleted on the phone, it's also deleted from the cloud storage.
* Judging by the number of privacy violation fines imposed on Apple by governments worldwide during 2022-2025, Apple is no longer the paragon of privacy it claims to be. It was also forced to betray user security by the removal of encryption in the UK, and if it can happen there, it could happen anywhere.
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Make that feature optional, please
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Somebody
commented
Maybe they can have 2 libraries for this on Drive. One library is one direction sync (acting as a backup). And the other is a bidirectional sync (acting as a cloud version of your current photo library on your phone). Win win.
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Jesse
commented
Very important feature to have, my gallery in drive is just a mess at the moment.
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Junior
commented
I believe there is a way to keep everyone happy by providing this feature as an optional configurable setting.
This feature is valid for some specific cases, but not for all. After all, no one deserves to delete something on their smartphone, believing it is backed up, only to suffer the side effect of losing it forever.
The user needs to know what will happen when they take an action; this is a requirement for any software or service. Therefore, keeping something like this optional, configurable, and disabled by default should satisfy everyone.
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uma_protection
commented
I don't have a 3Tb of space on my phone. I use it as a backup. But as an option why not
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Adam
commented
So i think having bidirectional sync for photos is not a good move
I like the idea a lot - of having an app that functions like google photos with the viewable - and something that indicates whether it is stored in the cloud or not
I also like the idea of a bidirectional optional folder or something for files
but i don't want photos to sync back to my phone from my pc
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Solidstate89 commented
If it's possible this would have to be an option as it defeats the point of it being a backup. Otherwise if not an option off by default, this should not be implemented.
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Alex
commented
Only as an option that’s off by default, but I do want it for one device.
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Ryan
commented
Make sure this is only an option. I delete years of photos from my phone at a time to free up space because I know it’s backed up. It will hurt if they disappear from my backup as well.
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user51516
commented
i also agree that this should be added as an option. i really hate the fact that i can keep my local gallery as clean as i want but drive is just super cluttered.
when implementing this feature i would also add another folder which is the diffs between drive and the local device so that people can more easily delete locally deleted files from the cloud retroactively
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@_Iturria
commented
Fully agree with need for real sync between phone and Proton Drive
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ja nein
commented
This should be an option, not hardcoded. It is a backup after all.
I take a lot of photos and delete 80% of them. But they have already been uploaded to Proton Drive, cluttering my space.