Google Drive to Proton Drive: Move Your Files Privately

Google Drive and Proton Drive Are Built for Different Things

It helps to be honest about the trade you're making. Google Drive is a collaboration platform that happens to store files; Proton Drive is an encrypted vault that happens to have sharing. Neither is "better" — they answer different questions.

🟡 Google Drive

Google Drive is where Docs, Sheets, and Slides live, and where every Android phone and Gmail account already has a foothold. Search inside PDFs and images, live co-editing, and a share dialog everyone already understands are its real strengths.

• 15 GB free, shared with Gmail and Google Photos; Google One takes that to 100 GB, 2 TB, and beyond.
• Native Docs, Sheets, and Slides don't count against storage — but they also aren't ordinary files, which matters when you leave (see the FAQ).
• Excellent full-text search and OCR across your whole Drive.
• Encrypted in transit and at rest with Google's keys; content is readable by Google's systems for search, spam, and abuse scanning.

🟣 Proton Drive

Proton Drive encrypts every file and file name on your device before upload, using the same open-source cryptography that runs Proton Mail. Proton cannot index, scan, or hand over readable copies of what you store, because it never holds the keys.

• Free plan unlocks up to 5 GB; Drive Plus is 200 GB, Proton Unlimited bundles 500 GB with Mail, Calendar, VPN, and Pass.
• End-to-end encryption on file bodies and metadata; independently audited, open-source clients.
• Swiss jurisdiction, with data centres in Switzerland and Germany.
• No in-cloud document editing or full-text search — encryption rules those out by design, so Docs-heavy workflows need to change.

Reasons to Move Files Out of Google Drive

Few people close their Google account. What actually happens is a sorting exercise: the shared spreadsheets stay, and the things that never needed Google's eyes on them leave.

• 🪪 Sensitive personal records — passport scans, medical letters, tax returns, contracts. These are the files people most regret leaving in a scanned, indexable cloud.
• 🧹 Reclaiming the shared 15 GB — Drive, Gmail, and Photos draw from one pool. Moving 10 GB of old archives to Proton is often cheaper than upgrading Google One just to keep receiving email.
• 📷 Original photo and video exports — Google Takeout dumps and old camera folders are large, static, and private — an ideal first batch to migrate.
• 🧭 Consolidating around Proton — if Proton Mail is already your inbox, Drive shares that account and storage, and the migration finishes the move.
• 🏛️ Jurisdiction and compliance — freelancers and small practices in Europe increasingly want client files held under Swiss or EU law rather than a US provider.

Method 1: Download from Google Drive, Upload to Proton Drive

The manual route works, and for a couple of folders it's the fastest thing to reach for. It stops being fun the moment Google starts splitting your download into a stack of zip files.

1. 📥 Download from Google Drive — In the Drive web app, select folders and choose Download. Google zips them and splits large selections into roughly 2 GB archives; native Docs, Sheets, and Slides are converted to .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx inside the zip.



2. 📦 Unzip and check — Expand each archive in Finder. Google occasionally renames files that share a name, so glance through before uploading.
3. 📤 Upload to Proton Drive — Open the Proton Drive web app, navigate to the destination, and drag the folders in. The browser encrypts every file before sending it, so keep the tab open and the Mac awake until the upload queue is empty.

Two copies of everything on your disk, no resume, and no report of what failed. That's acceptable for 3 GB of documents and a bad idea for a decade of photos — which is what the next two methods are for.

Method 2: Transfer Google Drive to Proton Drive with OurClone

OurClone talks to Google's API and Proton's API directly from your Mac — nothing passes through a third-party server — and shows you every file as it moves. Here's the whole thing in under two minutes, followed by the steps in detail.

• 🔗 Step 1: Add Google Drive as the Source (Browser Sign-In) — In OurClone open Add Storage and pick Google Drive. Name the connection, and a browser window opens to Google's sign-in — choose the account, click Allow, and Google Drive appears in your storage list. If you have several Google accounts, add each one separately.



• 🔐 Step 2: Add Proton Drive as the Destination — Open Add Storage again and pick Proton Drive. Enter your Proton email and password, plus the current 2FA code if you've enabled two-factor. The first connection pauses briefly while your encryption keys are initialised, then Proton Drive joins the list.



• 🔀 Step 3: Set Source, Target and Mode on the Migrate Page — Open the Migrate tab. Pick Google Drive and browse to the folders you're moving, then pick Proton Drive and choose or create the destination folder. Select a mode:
  • Copy — duplicates files to Proton Drive; nothing is deleted from Google Drive.
  • Move — transfers to Proton Drive, then deletes the originals from Google Drive — this is how you actually free up the shared 15 GB.
  • Sync — makes Proton Drive mirror Google Drive; extra files in Proton Drive are removed, but Google Drive is left untouched.
  Click Migrate.



• 📊 Watch Progress and Confirm — The Task panel shows counts, speed, ETA, and any failed files. When it reads completed, open Proton Drive in OurClone or the web app and spot-check a few folders. After a Move, confirm Google Drive's storage meter has dropped — it can take Google a few minutes to update.

Start with Copy on one folder, open it in Proton, and only then run Move on the rest — the transfer resumes after a Google rate limit or a Proton throttle, so a big library is safe to leave running overnight.

Method 3: Transfer Google Drive to Proton Drive with rclone

Under the hood OurClone runs rclone, so anyone comfortable in Terminal can do the same job by hand — useful for scripting or for a Mac that runs unattended.

Step 1: Install rclone

brew install rclone, or download from the official downloads page.

Step 2: Configure both remotes

Run rclone config. The drive backend walks you through Google OAuth in a browser; the protondrive backend asks for your Proton username and password, and a 2FA code if enabled.

Step 3: Run the transfer

# Copy — keep Google Drive intact
rclone copy gdrive:Documents proton:Documents --progress

# Move — delete originals from Google Drive after transfer
rclone move gdrive:Documents proton:Documents --progress

# Sync — make Proton Drive mirror Google Drive (deletes extras in Proton Drive)
rclone sync gdrive:Documents proton:Documents --progress

The Google-specific flag worth knowing: --drive-export-formats docx,xlsx,pptx controls what native Docs become on the way out (that set is rclone's default, so you can omit it). A cautious first command looks like rclone copy gdrive:"Scans" proton:Archive/Scans --progress --dry-run.

Caveats

• ⚠️ sync and move delete files — check the direction and run with --dry-run first.
• ⚠️ Google's API returns rate-limit errors on heavy bursts; rclone backs off and retries, but the terminal will look alarming.
• ⚠️ Terminal-only progress, and both credentials configured by hand — the parts OurClone takes care of for you.

Things That Catch People Out on This Pair