Secure photo storage and backup

The safest way to store your photos online is to use a cloud storage with end-to-end encryption. This means your files are encrypted on your device before they’re uploaded and can only be decrypted by you or those you choose to share them with. Even if the server is hacked or breached, your photos remain private and inaccessible to anyone else.

To store your photos privately, you can use an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service like Proton Drive. This means you can access your files from anywhere, while ensuring they are kept safe and secure. Using a secure cloud storage provider is more convenient than encrypting your photos yourself and storing them locally on a device or an external hard drive.

Photos can be encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. No one can access your photos (not even Proton) except you and the people you share them with. With Proton Drive, all the encryption happens automatically, so you do not need any technological know-how to encrypt your photos.

You can securely share photos individually or by creating albums. If you're sharing with trusted contacts — like family members, collaborators, or clients — you can use email sharing to send a direct invite. For broader sharing, you can create a secure public link, making it easy to share photos with anyone — you can also add a password and set an expiration date to limit access and keep your content protected.

For both email sharing and public links, you can choose whether recipients have viewer access (can only view and download) or editor access (can upload photos in shared albums — useful for group photo collections or collaborative albums).

While no method can completely prevent someone from copying your photos once they’ve been shared, you can take a few steps to reduce the risk of unauthorized use. When sharing via a public link, set an expiration date so the photos are only accessible for a limited time, and add a password to the link to restrict access to specific people.

If you'd like to visually mark your photos before sharing — for example, with a name, logo, or copyright notice — you can add a watermark using our free image watermark tool before uploading them to Proton Drive.

To back up your photos to Proton Drive, open the app on your device, log in, go to the Photos tab, and enable photo backup. If you previously turned off backup, go to Settings → Backup → Photos backup and tap the toggle to turn it back on. Proton Drive will start uploading your photos to your secure cloud storage — it might take some time if you have many photos.

If you run out of storage, Proton Drive will stop automatically backing up your photos. To resume automatic photo backup, you will need to free up some space in Proton Drive (e.g., by deleting files) or upgrade to a plan with more storage.

Yes, but you need to turn it on. You can ensure your photos are backed up automatically by Proton Drive for Android and iOS by turning on backup from within the Photo tab.