Guide · PrivoHub Drive

Set up PrivoHub Drive on your devices

PrivoHub Drive is your private file storage, running on OpenCloud and sharing the same EU-hosted workspace as your Photos. This guide covers getting to it from your browser, your phone and your computer, editing documents in place, and sharing what you want to share.

1. Find your Drive address

Your Drive has its own web address:

https://drive-yourname.privohub.com

Replace yourname with your workspace name. Open your Portal and press Copy link on the Drive tile to get yours exactly right.

yourname.privohub.com is your workspace home page, which links to your apps. drive-yourname.privohub.com is Drive itself, and that is the address the mobile and desktop apps need.

2. How signing in works

Drive has no separate password. You sign in with your PrivoHub account, the same one you use for the Portal, Photos and Vault, and it hands you straight into your files. In the mobile and desktop apps you enter your Drive address and sign in on the PrivoHub page that opens.

3. Use it in your browser

This is the main way to use Drive and there is nothing to install. Open your Drive address, sign in, and you are in.

Drag files or whole folders from your computer into the browser window to upload them.
Create folders to organise things, and rename or move them from the right-click menu.
Search finds files by name anywhere in your Drive, from the box at the top. It reads names and file details, not the text inside documents.
Deleted files go to Trash first, so an accident is recoverable.

4. Open and edit documents in the browser

Drive has an office editor built in, so a document opens where it already lives, with nothing to install and nothing to download first. Double-click a file and it opens for editing.

Documents, spreadsheets and presentations, in both the Microsoft formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and the OpenDocument ones (.odt, .ods, .odp). New in the toolbar creates any of them.
PDFs and ebooks open in a viewer, and plain text and Markdown in a simple editor.
Changes save back to the same file in your Drive as you work, and version history keeps the earlier ones.
Share a document with edit rights and you can both work on it at the same time, seeing each other's changes and cursors as they happen.

5. Set up your phone or tablet

Install OpenCloud from the App Store or Google Play.
When it asks for your server address, enter https://drive-yourname.privohub.com.
Sign in with your PrivoHub account on the page that opens.

From there you can browse and open your files, upload from your phone, and mark files to keep available offline. The app can also upload your camera roll automatically, though if photos are what you are after, PrivoHub Photos is the better home for them.

6. Sync files with your computer

The OpenCloud Desktop app keeps a Drive folder on your computer in sync with your PrivoHub Drive. Put a file in that folder and it uploads; change something in Drive from your browser or phone and the change shows up on your computer.

Install it for your system. You need version 4.0.0 or newer:

Windows 10 or 11: from the Microsoft Store, which also keeps it up to date.
macOS 13 or newer: download the .pkg from OpenCloud's releases page. Pick arm64 for Apple silicon (M1 and later) or x86_64 for an Intel Mac.
Linux: download the .AppImage from the same releases page, make it executable and run it.

Then connect it to your Drive:

Open the app and enter your Drive address, https://drive-yourname.privohub.com.
Your browser opens the PrivoHub sign-in page. Sign in with your PrivoHub account, then go back to the app.
Choose where the Drive folder should live on your computer, and whether to sync everything or only what you pick.

On Windows, files can stay online until you open them: everything shows up in File Explorer, and a file downloads the moment you open it. Right-click a file or folder to keep it on your computer always, or to free up space again.

Syncing works in both directions, so it is not a backup on its own. Delete a file from the Drive folder on your computer and it is deleted from your Drive too. It goes to Drive's Trash first, so a mistake can be undone. To keep a copy of a folder such as your Documents in Drive, copy it into the Drive folder rather than relying on the original.

Seeing a client not found error? Your app is older than version 4.0.0. Update it, quit it completely (including from the system tray or menu bar), then add your account again.

Drive has no app passwords. The desktop and mobile apps always sign in through your PrivoHub account, which is what lets access actually be removed when it is revoked: if a workspace owner removes you, your apps are signed out and cannot sign back in.

7. Share files and folders

With people in your workspace: share a file or folder and choose whether they can view or edit it.
With anyone: generate a public link, optionally protected with a password and an expiry date.
Collecting files: create an upload request, a link that lets someone upload into a folder without seeing what is already in it.

8. Encrypted folders, if you want them

Name a folder so it ends in .vault and Drive treats it as an encrypted folder. You set a password for it, and everything inside is encrypted and decrypted in your browser, so what reaches our servers is only ever the encrypted version. It is the same format as rclone crypt, so you can open it with rclone outside PrivoHub too.

These are optional, and they trade some convenience for that extra layer:

No thumbnails or previews, and documents in there cannot be opened in the browser editor.
Search cannot see inside a vault folder, not even the file names.
The folder password is separate from your PrivoHub password, and it is not stored anywhere.

Forget a vault folder's password and nobody can open it again, including us. That is the point of it, but it means the password needs somewhere safe. Your PrivoHub Vault is a good home for it.

Naming here is admittedly confusing, so to be clear: an encrypted folder in Drive is not the same thing as PrivoHub Vault, which is your password manager. Different feature, same word.

9. Storage is shared with Photos

Drive and Photos draw on the same quota, so a file kept in Drive counts against the same limit as your photo library. Your Portal shows the combined usage with the two split out, and you can upgrade there if you need more room.

Support OpenCloud

PrivoHub Drive is built on OpenCloud, an open-source project we did not write and do not fund out of your subscription. If you would like to support it directly you can sponsor it on GitHub, or contribute code, translations, and bug reports. That goes to the project rather than to us, and it changes nothing about your PrivoHub plan. See our open source licenses page for the full picture.

Need a hand?

Email support@privohub.com and we will get back to you, or use the contact form.