pdrive-sync

pdrive-sync is a simple and lightweight way to orchestrate the official Proton Drive CLI. It adds a scheduled one-way and two-way folder sync layer; it is not another Proton client and does not implement authentication, or store Proton credentials.

It supports local-to-remote push, remote-to-local pull, and two-way sync. Deletion is opt-in: delete = "trash" moves removed files to Proton Drive Trash or the local desktop Trash. It never empties either Trash.

Mode	Normal changes	delete = "trash"
push	Local is authoritative; new and changed local files upload.	Local deletions move the matching remote files to Proton Drive Trash.
pull	Proton Drive is authoritative; new and changed remote files download.	Remote deletions move the matching local files to the desktop Trash.
two-way	A change on one side copies to the unchanged side. If both changed, conflict decides.	A deletion propagates only when the other side is unchanged; delete/change combinations are conflicts.

With delete = "keep", files missing from one side are copied back in two-way mode and left alone in one-way modes.

Install

First install the official Proton Drive CLI. Version 0.2.0 uses the batch and JSON result API from Proton Drive CLI 0.7.0 (Proton Drive SDK js@0.20.0). Log in with its own command:

proton-drive auth login

proton-drive must be on PATH, or proton_drive_bin must point to its executable. Then install the sync wrapper:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/screwys/pdrive-sync-rs/main/install.sh | sh

The installer puts pdrive-sync in ~/.local/bin, opens the interactive configuration, and installs and starts pdrive-sync.service. It detects a systemd, dinit, or OpenRC user service manager automatically.

Use pdrive-sync restart to restart the installed service, or pdrive-sync update to replace the current executable with the latest release.

systemd uses a oneshot service and timer. dinit and OpenRC supervise the built-in interval loop from ~/.config/dinit.d/pdrive-sync or ~/.config/rc/init.d/pdrive-sync. Force detection when needed:

pdrive-sync install --init dinit
pdrive-sync status --init dinit
pdrive-sync restart --init dinit
pdrive-sync uninstall --init dinit

The systemd unit also applies a soft MemoryHigh=512M cache-reclaim boundary. dinit can only join a cgroup created elsewhere, and OpenRC user services do not create cgroups, so the installer does not substitute an unsafe hard memory limit for those managers.

Configuration

The default file is ~/.config/pdrive-sync/config.toml:

proton_drive_bin = "proton-drive"

[[sync]]
name = "documents"
mode = "push"
local = "/home/me/Documents"
remote = "/my-files/Documents"
delete = "trash"

Add more [[sync]] entries as needed. Two-way conflicts default to fail, which plans every action first and changes nothing when a conflict exists. local-wins and remote-wins resolve them in the named direction. ready_marker = ".sync-ready" can guard a removable source from being mistaken for an empty folder. See config.example.toml for every operation. exclude = ["private/**", "*.tmp"] leaves matching paths untouched on both sides, including when deletion is enabled.

After a failed attempt, a desktop notification is sent when no sync has completed successfully for 24 hours. Repeated notifications are limited to once per 24 hours. Set notifications = false in the configuration to disable them for the service, or pass sync --no-notifications for one run.

Run selected entries with pdrive-sync sync documents photos, or describe a safe one-off sync with --local, --remote, --mode, and --delete. pdrive-sync config validate checks the file.

Behavior

Push scans only file metadata locally. New or changed files are sent to the Proton Drive CLI in bounded batches; the CLI performs its required hashing and automatically skips files whose remote content already matches. Each successful batch item is checkpointed immediately, including when another item in the same batch fails. Remote cleanup is also batched and begins only after every upload batch succeeds.

Pull and two-way sync still verify downloaded content against Proton Drive's SHA-1 metadata. A push checkpoint does not store a duplicate locally computed SHA-1; if the same entry later changes to two-way mode, its digest is rebuilt once before conflict planning.

Symlinks and non-UTF-8 names are skipped or rejected rather than followed. Empty directories are not reproduced. Pull and two-way modes inventory the remote tree on each run because the CLI does not expose the SDK event stream.

License

Licensed under the MIT License.