A major infrastructure upgrade

One of the biggest projects this month wasn't a new feature.

It was infrastructure.

As Drime continues to grow, parts of our previous infrastructure were starting to reach their limits during periods of heavy traffic. So we made significant changes to how the platform is structured and scaled.

This included:

• New infrastructure across the platform

• Better scalability during heavy traffic

• Faster loading across Drive

• Reduced database load

• Improved caching

• Faster analytics processing

• Faster folder creation, moving, and renaming

• Improved real-time synchronization

• Faster media and timeline loading

• Improved upload finalization

• Better reliability for large operations

Infrastructure work isn't always the most visible, but it has an impact on almost everything you do in Drime. There's still more work ahead, especially around upload performance globally, but July was an important step forward.

The PDF Editor gets a complete overhaul

The PDF Editor received one of its largest upgrades yet.

We rebuilt the text editing engine to better understand existing PDF content instead of treating documents like a flat image.

You can now directly modify existing text while preserving much more of its original appearance.

Major improvements include:

• Edit existing PDF text directly

• Preserve original formatting, fonts, and layout

• Automatic font family, size, and style detection

• Detect and manipulate existing text and images

• Move, replace, and delete images

• Improved compatibility with PDFs created by other editors

• New highlight system

• Advanced shapes and arrows

• Customizable arrowheads

• Single-page and two-page viewing modes

• PDF form creation

• Text fields, checkboxes, dates, text areas, and dropdowns

• Comments

• Find & Replace

• Completely rebuilt drawing engine

• Improved loading speed and performance

• Real Time collaboration

Editing existing PDFs is notoriously complicated because of how PDF files store their contents, so this overhaul required rebuilding a large part of the editor.

We're still improving compatibility with more documents and PDF generators over time.

Sign becomes much more powerful

Sign continued to evolve rapidly throughout July.

We focused on making it useful not just for manually signing a few documents, but also for integrations and larger workflows.

New capabilities include:

• Bulk Send for up to 1,000 recipients using CSV imports

• CSV field mapping

• Embeddable signing experience for websites and applications

• Public Sign API

• Webhooks for signing events and automated workflows

• New image stamp presets such as Approved and Confirmed

• Custom stamp uploads

• Automatic signature and image optimization

• Automatic resizing for signatures, initials, stamps, and images

• Template thumbnails

• Improved workspace permissions

• Better document and template access for invited members

• Signer geolocation in audit trails

• Country, region, and city information

• Improved PDF generation recovery

• Additional UI refinements

This brings Sign much closer to being a complete signing platform inside Drime rather than simply another document tool.

The Sign API documentation is also on the way.

Send & Track gets advanced analytics and privacy improvements

Send & Track received a major expansion this month.

The goal is simple: give you more control over how documents are shared and much better insight into what happens after you send them.

New features include:

• Optional email gate before viewing

• Optional NDA acceptance before viewing

• Dynamic watermarks

• Stronger document protection

• Simplified PDF viewer

• PDF link click tracking

• Video engagement analytics

• Visitor timeline

• More accurate completion tracking

• Time spent per page

• Improved unique visitor detection

• Advanced analytics filters

• Custom date ranges

• Period comparisons

• Customizable conversion funnels

• Email notifications when someone views a document

• New default preferences page

We also moved Send & Track to cookieless tracking, providing analytics without relying on traditional tracking cookies.

Vault gets faster and more complete

Vault was another major focus throughout July.

We've continued closing the gap between what you can do inside Drive and what you can do inside your encrypted Vault, while preserving its zero-knowledge architecture.

Improvements include:

• More reliable uploads

• Faster file previews

• More reliable previews

• More reliable folder size calculations

• Quick View support

• New Lock Vault functionality

• Faster search

• More accurate search

• Accent-insensitive search

• Improved folder breadcrumbs

• Photo slideshows

• DOCX previews

• XLSX previews

• PPTX previews

• Better download stability

• Improved overall loading reliability

Vault will continue receiving significant updates as we bring more of the regular Drime experience into the encrypted environment.

Mobile backups become much easier to trust

One of our biggest mobile priorities has been making automatic photo and video backup easier to understand, control, and verify.

This month brought several major improvements in that direction.

We introduced a new Backup Status page where you can see exactly what is happening with every file.

You can now track whether something is:

• Uploaded

• Waiting in the queue

• Already detected as a duplicate

• Failed with an error

We also improved backup behavior itself.

Other improvements include:

• Better automatic photo and video backup reliability

• Wi-Fi only enabled by default unless mobile data is explicitly allowed

• Automatic pause when Wi-Fi disappears

• Automatic resume when Wi-Fi returns

• Fixed backups continuing over mobile data when disabled

• Improved metadata preservation

• GPS location preservation for videos

• Capture date preservation

• Improved photo picker with EXIF support

• Better initial Gallery synchronization

• Improved handling of backup folders

• Ability to manage which phone photos and videos are synchronized

The goal is to make backups something you can verify instead of something you simply have to hope is working.

Mobile keeps getting closer to the full Drime experience

Backups weren't the only thing that changed on mobile.

July brought several new features and major refinements across Android and iOS.

Gallery and Photos

• Photo Albums

• Cloud album synchronization

• Preserve your phone's album structure

• Optional backup using your device folder structure

• Dedicated Drime, Camera, Shared, and Received albums

• Save albums in one tap

• Faster Gallery synchronization

• Improved selection UI

• Photo location information

• Last modified information

• Folder size display

Files

• Folder Info with total size and item count

• Custom sort and view settings per folder

• "Show in folder"

• Better filename preservation

• Improved file menus and navigation

Vault

• Secure previews for images

• Secure video previews

• Secure PDF previews

• Secure audio previews

Uploads

• Redesigned Upload Manager

• Live thumbnails

• Upload progress

• Faster uploads

• Better large file reliability

• Duplicate detection

• Cancel individual uploads

Search and media

• Typo-tolerant search

• Highlighted search results

• Faster HEIC thumbnails

• Faster video streaming

• Audio metadata including title, artist, and album artwork

We also launched Whiteboards on Android and iOS, bringing another major collaborative Drime feature to mobile.

Drive gets faster and smarter

Drive received dozens of smaller improvements throughout July.

Notable additions include:

• Folder activity notifications

• Faster Gallery selection with thousands of photos

• Automatic Backup-only Gallery filter

• Export directly to Transfr.me from a workspace

• Improved Upload Manager

• Improved Quick View

• Faster media timeline

• Faster folder operations

• Better real-time synchronization

• More reliable screen recording uploads

We also introduced granular API key permissions.

Developers can now independently configure read and write permissions depending on the resources an API key should have access to.

Reliability and bug fixes

A significant part of July was dedicated to fixing issues reported by users across web and mobile.

Some notable fixes include:

• Uploads stuck on "Finalizing in progress"

• Incorrect workspace storage limits for invited members

• Folder sharing emails not being sent in certain cases

• Multi-recipient sharing issues

• Recipient-specific links not working correctly

• Invalid 2FA verification codes in some situations

• Logout occasionally failing

• Quick View preference checkboxes not responding

• File list alignment with larger accessibility font sizes

• Incorrect Upload Manager file icons

• Video Editor Save button disappearing

• PDF forms reverting to previous versions in Sign

• Invited members being blocked from Sign documents and templates

• Automatic photo uploads not starting on some iOS versions

• Backup scanning issues

• Files being moved to incorrect workspaces on mobile

• Ghost files after moves

• Tablet layout issues

• Google Play Services-related crashes

• Google networking component failures

• Mobile data backup behavior

• Rclone API duplication errors

We're continuing to work through reports as they come in.

A month focused on the foundations

July had plenty of visible features, but a large part of the work went into things users shouldn't have to think about.

• Caching.

• Database load.

• Upload finalization.

• Network behavior.

• Backup recovery.

• Preview reliability.

• Gallery performance.

• Real-time synchronization.

These aren't necessarily the features that make the best screenshots, but they're critical to making Drime something you can rely on every day.

We've grown quickly over the past year, and some parts of Drime need to evolve with that growth. We're investing heavily in those foundations while continuing to ship new features alongside them.

Coming next

Reliability and performance remain major priorities.

We're continuing work on:

• Windows Desktop performance and reliability

• Sync engine improvements

• Storage usage synchronization after large file operations

• Faster and more reliable uploads

• More Vault improvements

• Mobile backup reliability and performance

• Transfr.me reliability and UX improvements

• Further infrastructure expansion

You'll also start seeing more of the longer-term projects we've been working on as they become ready to share.

As usual, we'll keep publishing weekly Highlights on our subreddit so you can follow development more closely.

Thank you

July was another intense month.

We rebuilt major parts of our infrastructure, transformed the PDF Editor, expanded Sign into a much more complete platform, upgraded Send & Track, made Vault faster, and shipped some of our most important mobile backup improvements yet.

Building new features matters. Making sure the features already there are fast, reliable, and ready to scale matters just as much.

Thank you for every bug report, suggestion, feature request, Reddit post, and message.

A lot of what we're working on comes directly from what you tell us.

See you next month.

The Drime Team