What Private.Ki Drive is
Drive keeps your own files, encrypted on your device before they leave it. Where to find it, what our server holds, and what it cannot read.
Drive is storage for your own files inside Private.Ki. Every file is encrypted on your device, to your own key, before it leaves — and so is its name. Our server holds the shape of your folders and the size of each encrypted file, and nothing else it can read.
Drive is for keeping your own files. It is not a way to send a file to somebody else: in this version there is no sharing, no link, no version history, and no way to attach a Drive file to an email. See What Drive does not do below.
Where to find it
Open the drawer. Under the mail folders there is a row with a hard-disk icon and the word Drive, with your storage on the right — 3.8 GB of 5 GB used — and a thin meter under it. Press it and you are in My files, the top of your Drive.
The addresses are /drive for the top, /drive/folder/… inside a folder, /drive/file/… for one open file, and /drive/deleted for Recently deleted.
Drive is not one of the halves of the Email | Chats switch; it is a destination of its own in the drawer. While you are in Drive, neither half of that switch is lit.
Drive is in the web app only. The Android and iPhone apps do not have Drive yet, and the drawer there shows no Drive row. Drive's encryption runs in the browser, so opening the web app in a phone browser does give you Drive, in a one-column layout.
If you started without signing up (Start without signing up) or arrived through a chat link, the Drive row is drawn with a padlock and pressing it explains that the feature needs a full account. Finish setting the account up and the row unlocks.
If your server has Drive switched off, the row is not drawn at all. If it is switched off for maintenance, the row is locked and Drive says Drive is currently unavailable.
What "encrypted on your device" means here
Every screen in Drive carries a green pill reading ENCRYPTED — END-TO-END (on an open file, FULLY ENCRYPTED — END-TO-END). Hovering it says: Encrypted on your device before it leaves — we cannot read your files or their names. That is literal, not a slogan:
- The file itself is encrypted with PGP, in your browser, to your own key, before a single byte is uploaded.
- The name, the type and the original size are encrypted the same way, into one small record the server stores and never opens. Renaming a file writes a new encrypted record; moving it changes which folder it points at.
- Downloading reverses it: your browser fetches the encrypted bytes and decrypts them locally. Our server never handles a readable copy.
Because the key is yours, Drive has the same hard consequence as the rest of Private.Ki: if you lose your passphrase and your recovery methods, nobody can open those files — not us. See Protect your passphrase.
What our server sees
Cannot see
- The contents of any file in Drive
- File and folder names — they are inside the encrypted record
- File types, so no previews, thumbnails or search on our side
Can see
- The shape of the tree — how many items, which folder each one is in, folders versus files
- The encrypted size of each file, and when it was added or changed
- Which items you have put in Recently deleted
The stored objects carry no name, no type and no tags. A listing of our storage is a set of random names and byte counts.
What Drive does not do in this version
Say so plainly, because a reader will look for these:
- No sharing and no public links. There is no way to give anyone else access to a file in Drive.
- No version history. Replacing a file does not keep the earlier one.
- No attaching from Drive. The mail composer cannot pick a file out of Drive; attach it from your computer instead (Attachments).
- No camera capture, and no apps — see the note above.
None of these has a greyed-out button waiting for it. If you cannot find the control, it is because it does not exist yet.
Common questions
Is Drive the same storage as my mail?
Yes — one meter for the whole account. Mail, the files inside mail and chat, and Drive all count against the same figure, which you can see in Settings → Storage and on the Drive row in the drawer. See File size and storage.
Can support recover a file I deleted?
No. We cannot read your files, so we cannot identify, restore or hand over one. Once it is deleted for good it is gone — see Delete and restore files.
Can I open my Drive files on my phone?
Only through the web app in a phone browser. The Android and iPhone apps do not have Drive yet.
Does Drive sync a folder on my computer?
No. There is no desktop sync client. You upload files and download them again.