Four months after it debuted on Windows, the privacy-focused Swiss business Proton has now made its end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) cloud storage service available to Mac users.
Since its founding some nine years ago, Proton has grown to include VPNs, a password manager, calendars, and yes, cloud storage in addition to its primary Gmail substitute, Proton Mail.
After launching Proton Drive on the web in September of last year, Proton then released native mobile apps in December and Windows in July. With the release of today’s news, Proton Drive is now completely cross-platform, enabling users to synchronize their data across all of their devices.
Proton Drive is a component of Proton’s larger strategy to launch safe, private Google substitute goods. Or, perhaps more properly for the majority of Mac users, an iCloud substitute from Apple.
Proton Drive does, in fact, offer complete encryption by default for files and folders; however, end-to-end encryption for certain types of data on iCloud was just introduced by Apple, but users still need to actively activate it. Proton Drive, on the other hand, claims that complete encryption is used by default for all data, including file names and metadata.
Proton Drive comes with 1GB of free storage. Paid subscriptions are also available, with 200GB of storage and extra features like the option to automatically save older versions of files for up to 10 years, starting at $4/month.
Proton Drive for Mac now only synchronizes files stored in the Proton Drive folder to the cloud, although the company claims to be working on enabling synchronization for any local folder.
Furthermore, the Proton Drive Mac program isn’t yet open source, but the firm promises that this will change eventually. Over the years, Proton has made the majority of its apps open source, enabling outside parties like security experts to examine the underlying code.
Additionally, Proton has already stated that, although it is on its long-term agenda, it will eventually happen for Linux users.
