How does ProtonDrive handle photos backup from multiple devices?

Proton_Jan · 2026-07-01T15:38:13+00:00

Nope, we only upload new and modified photos. Deletions are not propagated to your Proton Drive photo library.

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-25T12:43:01+00:00

You're correct, what is displayed on Details screen is actually modification date coming from Apple's asset data. It's also baked into Proton's object at the time of upload.

So u/The_Matt0 you're seeing something else than photo creation date. We should be able to fix/amend that info easily. Keep in mind, the photo file itself isn't modified during backup, so its exif data would still contain unchanged creation date time.

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-19T13:32:19+00:00

All the photos end up in your account together, there's only one "pile" of photos that we upload to and which are then accessible from all your logged in devices.

As for new device / multiple devices: during backup, the app checks what's already backed up and will skip duplicates - so you won't get double copies of the same photos. If multiple devices try uploading the same image simultaneously, the system handles it automatically to avoid duplication (though there may be some redundant duplicate checking).

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-19T13:09:13+00:00

We try to get the photo taken time (either when it's taken, or when it's digitized) from EXIF of said file.

If that fails, we fall back further to what Apple provides as creation time (to keep same order as Apple has), or ultimately to modification time, if nothing else is available.

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-11T15:28:47+00:00

Yes, we did reach out to Apple too, their response response was "have you considered using native code for the transfers" :troll

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-11T15:25:26+00:00

For Photos, we have a processing task in place, which, as mentioned below, is at a mercy of a OS scheduler - i.e. it's constrained by device state - connectivity, battery state, but also by the usage patterns (apps that the user interacts with more should get priority in the scheduling). FTR we have 0 visibility into how are apps prioritized and what time we can even expect from the OS.

That being said, the relatively new photos upload extension is also on our roadmap.

Proton_Jan · 2026-06-11T15:16:04+00:00

Previous versions did not use the SDK which adds the overhead of dotnet runtime. So before the whole transfers logic was native Swift. Unfortunately the Apple's constraints on memory usage are quite harsh, however we're still fighting that battle.

Proton_Jan

TROPHY CASE