The team at Proton has unveiled a new command-line interface (CLI) for Proton Drive, enabling users to manage their encrypted files seamlessly from a terminal across major platforms including Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Features of Proton Drive CLI
This innovative CLI supports a variety of essential filesystem tasks, allowing users to:
proton-drive auth login– Initiate authentication through your browser.proton-drive filesystem upload ./reports/* /my-files/Reports --conflict-strategy skip– Upload local documents while bypassing files that are already present on the server.proton-drive sharing status /my-files/Reports– Check the sharing status and permissions of a specific folder.proton-drive sharing invite --user [email protected] --role editor --message "Please review reports" /my-files/Reports– Invite a collaborator to a shared folder with editor access, complete with a personalized message.
Proton has indicated that future updates to the CLI will introduce capabilities for managing photos, sharing files and folders through secure public links, creating custom albums, and facilitating easy switching between multiple accounts.
To install the CLI on macOS and Linux, users can download the pre-built binary and make it executable by running chmod +x proton-drive in their terminal. The operating system ensures that your active login session is stored securely using native tools such as macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager. For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, building the program from source is also an option; users can clone the repository, install dependencies using Bun, test the build, and compile the TypeScript code directly.
This release comes shortly after Proton announced a complete overhaul of Drive’s engine, which now boasts a performance increase of three times across all platforms. This enhancement is attributed to a unified Drive SDK that replaces outdated platform-specific codebases, executing cryptographic tasks four times faster, thus minimizing battery drain and heat generation on mobile devices. Additionally, this shared engine enables Lumo, Proton’s AI assistant, to read and process Drive files while maintaining the integrity of the system’s end-to-end encryption protocols.
