proton index

Every command under proton index, with the arguments and flags it takes. For these commands in use, see the index guide.

Holds create, delete, list, update and watch.

create

Index an app so its contents can be searched.

Name the apps to index, or none for every app that can be. Mail and Drive are indexed in two passes. Mail takes every message first, which takes minutes and answers a filtered listing, then the bodies newest first, which for a large mailbox takes hours. Drive takes the tree first, then the text of your text files up to 1 MB each, most recently changed first; a PDF, an image or anything larger is indexed by name alone. Stopping it and running it again carries on where it left off.

What it writes is encrypted to your account’s keys, under ~/.config/proton-cli/index.

proton index create [REF...]

proton index create
proton index create mail
proton index create drive calendar
proton index create drive --dry-run

delete

Remove an index from this machine.

Name the apps to remove, or none for all of them. Nothing in your account changes, and searches go back to what Proton can answer.

Removing the last one removes the index key too; building again starts from nothing.

proton index delete [REF...]

proton index delete
proton index delete --yes mail

list

List what is indexed on this machine.

Reads the files and nothing else, so it works signed out. INDEXED counts what a search would look through; a build that has not finished says how much of the app it has reached, and mail and drive say how many bodies and file texts they hold while those are still downloading.

proton index list

proton index list
proton index list --output json

update

Bring every index up to date.

Applies what has happened since the last run, carries on a build that was interrupted, and reads an app again where Proton could not say what changed. It creates nothing: an app with no index is left alone.

A search catches up by itself, so this is for having it done already: run it from cron, or leave index watch attached.

proton index update

proton index update
proton index update --quiet

watch

Keep every index current until you stop it.

Applies changes as they land, one line per batch, and finishes a build that was interrupted. It creates nothing: an app with no index is left alone.

While it runs, a search reads the copy as of the last poll, at most 30 seconds old. Prefer it when searches are frequent; run index update on a timer when they are not.

proton index watch

proton index watch
proton index watch --output json

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Every command also takes the flags that work everywhere.