NeutronDrive

An unofficial, open-source Linux desktop client for Proton Drive. Browse your cloud files, synchronize folders in the background, keep selected items offline, and manage photos, albums and sharing from a native Qt Quick interface.

Version 1.1.1. This patch fixes a Nautilus crash during file-manager extension shutdown. Normal mount visibility updates remain enabled. Previously visited cloud views and photo previews now survive application and PC restarts. Saved views appear from local disk and refresh quietly in the background. Ubuntu 26.10 DEB checks remain part of the release test matrix. Keep an independent backup of important files. Complete Windows/macOS feature parity has not been reached.

NeutronDrive is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially supported by Proton AG. It uses Proton's open-source SDK for account access, encryption and service requests. The interface and icon are original.

Import an extracted Google Takeout photo/video export with a review before upload, configure computer backup separately, and optionally support development on Ko-fi. The built-in DEB/RPM updater safely restarts the app and previously running services. See feature details and limitations and update restart behavior.

The Qt Quick interface provides a clearer content area, consistent light/dark surfaces, roomier navigation and a wrapping file-action bar. The following English previews use isolated synthetic data in the actual app.

Light mode · Compact layout · Capture provenance

Native file-manager integrations now support a blue sync emblem while Keep on device downloads a file or folder. The green checkmark is shown once content is available locally. Cancelled or failed transfers clear the progress indicator; process-instance validation prevents stale blue emblems after a crash. Snap and Flatpak still do not install native file-manager extensions.

Compact layout · Capture version and hashes

The app follows your system's light/dark preference. Settings → Appearance also lets you choose System, Light or Dark manually. Theme changes apply immediately.

Setup: sign in · Setup: choose folder, dark mode · Sync settings · Computer backup · Online drive · Sharing window · Activity progress

The Proton Drive bookmark uses NeutronDrive’s icon. A green checkmark means a file is available locally; a folder is marked when its contents are fully available offline. A blue sync emblem indicates an active download. Use Keep on device to retain selected files or folders and Free up space to remove eligible local cached copies. These actions do not open the main window. A sharing emblem identifies directly shared folders and can appear beside the offline indicator. Share opens its separate sharing window.

These are GNOME Files (Nautilus) captures in English, with synthetic example files and offline-status fixtures rendered by the real extension. They illustrate the integration, not a live cloud download. Appearance varies with the file manager and desktop theme. Capture details.

• Keep visited file lists, incoming/outgoing shares, computers and cloud trash available after restarting the app or PC.
• Reuse saved photo inventories, albums and thumbnails without waiting for a cloud query first.
• Read cached views even while a cloud operation holds the SDK lock. Only the local account check uses the separate read path; synchronization safety checks still use live data.
• Reconcile changes in the background, preserve unchanged views and discard snapshots for confirmed removals. Manual Refresh still requests current metadata.
• Isolate snapshots by the local SDK account session. Signing in clears previous memory views; signing out invalidates the active disk cache.

The first visit still needs a network connection. View snapshots have a 256 MiB per-session disk budget and are not cleared merely because the app closes. The API still supplies metadata listings; this is not a server-side delta-sync claim. Cache design and privacy.

• Set up Proton Drive: sign in through your browser, then choose a sync folder in the first-run assistant; the default is ~/ProtonDrive.
• Browse and transfer: list/grid views, search within the current folder, upload/download, create folders, rename, move and recover trashed files. Keyboard navigation.
• Use on-demand files: cache directory metadata first; download file content when opened or marked Keep on device. Files and folders can be pinned recursively; Free up space removes eligible cached copies.
• Synchronize local folders: automatic background jobs, local filesystem notifications, remote events, pause/resume, retry and visible conflicts.
• Back up computer folders: register a Linux computer through the SDK and synchronize selected folders under Proton Drive's Computers section.
• Manage photos: a continuously scrolling timeline, total count, selection overlays, image viewer, albums and location links to OpenStreetMap. Incremental tiles preserve scroll position, retain nearby previews and load pages ahead; thumbnails are cached across sessions; first-time previews still depend on the network. Photo viewer controls and navigation.
• Import Google Photos: review an extracted Takeout export and upload photos/videos with matching date/location metadata. Import guide and limits.
• Manage your account: the lower-left user menu opens Settings, the Proton subscription dashboard, Proton Drive online and guarded sign-out.
• Share: view incoming/outgoing shares, create public links and send confirmed email invitations in a separate sharing window. Supported native file managers open that window directly.
• Keep working in the background: close to tray, login autostart, availability emblems and a Proton Drive favorite on supported desktops.
• Check for updates: silent checks at startup and every two hours, plus manual checks; native DEB and supported Fedora/openSUSE RPM packages support verified downloads, installation after system authorization, and a guarded app/service restart.

See desktop features, file-manager support, computer backup and Windows feature comparison for the exact scope.

The stable version series starts at 1.0.0. Users of retired alpha clients can download and install the current package once if their old updater does not offer it. DEB, RPM and Arch packages use epoch 1, so package managers correctly treat the release as an upgrade. Preferences, account storage and sync data are retained. Future updates use the usual updater. The old GitHub releases and tags are retired; Git history remains. Historical release notes describe their original versions.

DEB packages are provided for amd64 and arm64. The release checks install the same DEB on Ubuntu 26.10 and test the Qt interface and Nautilus integration. These container checks do not replace a full GNOME/Wayland desktop-session test.

Download from GitHub Releases. The commands below use the 1.1.1 release assets, not development artifacts. Packages are independent community builds, not official Proton packages or store listings.

Snap Store publication is automated, but availability currently awaits Canonical’s manual review of the application’s D-Bus interfaces. The downloadable Snap is available with the GitHub release; a queued Store upload is not yet an installable Store revision.

# Debian / Ubuntu (choose arm64 instead of amd64 if appropriate)
sudo apt install ./neutrondrive_1.1.1-1_amd64.deb

# Fedora
sudo dnf install ./neutrondrive-1.1.1-fedora-x86_64.rpm

# openSUSE
sudo zypper install ./neutrondrive-1.1.1-opensuse-x86_64.rpm

# Flatpak
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user ./neutrondrive-1.1.1-x86_64.flatpak
flatpak run io.github.SigmaCodez.NeutronDrive

# Snap (local unsigned package)
sudo snap install --dangerous ./neutrondrive_1.1.1_amd64.snap
sudo snap connect neutrondrive:password-manager-service

# AppImage
chmod +x NeutronDrive-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage
./NeutronDrive-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage

# Arch: install the downloaded package with dependencies
sudo pacman -U ./neutrondrive-bin-1.1.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Verify downloads against the release's SHA256SUMS. Release evidence includes BUILD_INFO.json, TEST_RESULTS.json and native/SDK provenance. Individual formats and architectures have different limits; testing does not cover every Linux distribution or desktop. See packaging, AppImage details, AUR recipe and validation.

1. Start NeutronDrive and complete browser sign-in. Enter credentials only on Proton's browser page, never in a chat or terminal command.
2. Choose an empty sync folder in the assistant, normally ~/ProtonDrive. Completing setup starts the on-demand service and configures login startup.
3. Browse the cached structure. Use Keep on device on selected files/folders to download them for offline use; completed items receive green availability emblems where the file manager supports them.
4. Use Free up space to return eligible items to online-only storage. Use Share… to open NeutronDrive's sharing dialog for the selected item.

The normal folder presentation uses FUSE on Linux. File-manager support varies: see the integration matrix, including optional Dolphin components and fallback behavior. GNOME needs a tray-host extension for a visible tray icon. Settings do not change your desktop's own language or theme.

Automatic sync also supports conventional local folder pairs. Do not target an on-demand FUSE mount with an eager folder-sync job. Native keyring sessions can be shared with other uses of the Proton CLI; signing out may sign out that shared session. Flatpak can use a separate portal-protected session.

The OS language is selected automatically, with English as the fallback. Settings → Appearance allows a manual language choice; restart the app after changing the language. The preference persists across starts.

25 language variants are included: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Norwegian Bokmål, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Greek, Belarusian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Newer labels can still fall back to English; machine-assisted translations need native-speaker review. No translation service is contacted at runtime. Translation status.

Sync detects conflicting edits and uses recoverable trash for verified file deletions. A changed counterpart, uncertain identity or delete-versus-edit case requires resolution. Replaced local content can be retained in private backup files; caches and local trash contain plaintext and need normal account protection.

Whole-folder deletion propagation remains guarded: the SDK cannot provide the complete proof needed for safe subtree deletion. Renames are not tracked as moves by folder sync. Remote writes have no conditional revision operation in this CLI, so rechecks reduce races but cannot make updates atomic.

Other limits include no multi-account UI, no Proton Docs/Sheets export, no embedded photo map. Public-link settings now support viewer/editor access, passwords, expiration dates and editor resharing, with a fresh-state check before saving. These checks are not an atomic server-side compare-and-swap. FUSE does not support every filesystem operation (including mmap, hardlinks and arbitrary permissions). Sandboxed packages have host-integration restrictions. Availability icons and favorite decoration depend on the file manager and its version.

Feature comparison · Sharing and remaining gaps · Security · Validation and known test limits · Updates

The application runtime is Rust: the UI controller, synchronization, transfers, cache, services, preferences and update logic. Qt Quick/QML defines the native interface; small C++ adapters connect Qt/KDE APIs. Proton's pinned TypeScript SDK bridge handles the upstream integration. Python and shell remain in build, packaging and regression tooling; no Python/PySide application runtime is shipped.

GitHub previously counted about 1.5 MB of HTML from one Rust copyright-notice file as source: packaging/licenses/rust/COPYRIGHT-library.html. It is third-party license documentation, not a web UI. The file stays in the repository and packages; .gitattributes classifies license documentation and vendored dependencies so GitHub's language chart reflects maintained source more accurately. Real Python, QML, C++ and TypeScript source is not relabeled as Rust.

Architecture · Rust migration · Upstream SDK and licenses

Build prerequisites include Rust 1.98.0, a C++17 compiler and a matching Qt 6.10.2 SDK. Python runs the build/test helpers; Bun 1.4.2 builds the pinned Proton bridge. Follow the native frontend guide and packaging instructions for dependencies, offline vendored Cargo builds, Qt preparation, runtime paths and verification.

Contributing · Release checklist · Open issues

NeutronDrive is MIT licensed. Bundled dependencies keep their own licenses and notices. Public screenshots use synthetic data and are refreshed from the actual GUI; development previews are labeled separately from releases.

The promotional website is configured for neutrondrive.sigmacodez.dev. Its Next.js/React source and deployment documentation are in website/. Run ./deploy.sh to deploy the website to the configured Docker server.