Drive Inside TrekMail Webmail: A Quick Tour

Every mailbox has its own private Drive space inside webmail. It's separate from Account Drive — the dashboard storage the account owner manages — but it lives in the same storage pool and uses the same upload, share, and trash mechanics.

This guide covers everything specific to the webmail-side experience: where Drive lives in the webmail UI, how it relates to Account Drive, how search works, and how Drive integrates with composing email.

Where Drive lives in webmail

Open your TrekMail webmail. In the left sidebar, alongside Inbox, Sent, and Drafts, you'll see a Drive icon. Click it to switch from your mailbox to your Drive view.

The Drive view replaces the message list with a file list. The compose button stays in the top-left so you can drop back into email at any time. Click any folder to step into it; click the breadcrumb to step back out.

You can also open a Drive item from anywhere in webmail using the global search — type the file name into the header search bar and matches appear inline. More on search below.

Personal vs shared

When you open Drive in webmail, the file list shows two zones — both visible at the same time, just clearly labelled:

• Your personal folders. Folders and files you've created in your own webmail Drive. Private to you. Other mailboxes in the account cannot see them.
• Account-shared folders. Folders the account owner has shared with the whole account. Every mailbox in the account sees these. Marked with a small "Shared" badge.

You can read, write, upload, and delete inside both zones. The only difference is who else sees what you do. A file uploaded to a personal folder is visible to you only. A file uploaded to a shared folder is immediately visible to every other mailbox in the account.

If you want to share a folder you created with the account, you have two paths:

• Move existing personal folders to shared. This requires the account owner — they need to relocate or recreate the folder in Account Drive and share it with the account.
• Create a new top-level folder marked as shared at creation time. When you create a top-level folder in webmail Drive, the create dialog has a Share with account checkbox. Tick it, and the folder lives in the account-wide space from the start.

Subfolders cannot be marked as shared — only top-level folders. If you need a deeper structure shared, build it inside an already-shared parent.

Drive search

The header search bar in webmail searches both messages and Drive content. Type a few letters of a filename or folder name and matches appear in the dropdown along with email matches.

Search is name-based — we match against file and folder names, not file contents. Matches include both your personal files and any Account-shared folders you can see, ranked by relevance.

Typing fast won't fire one search per keystroke — the search runs once you pause. Click a result to jump straight to where the file lives.

If you want a more thorough exploration of a folder's contents, navigate to it manually — the folder view shows everything, search shows only matches.

Uploading from webmail

The mechanics are identical to dashboard Drive: click Upload, pick files, drag-and-drop. Files upload to whatever folder you're currently in. For large files, chunked upload kicks in automatically. The upload bar shows progress at the bottom of the screen.

See Uploading Files to Drive for the full upload mechanics, limits, and error messages.

Drive in the composer

Drive is built into the email composer in two ways.

Auto-routing for large attachments

Attach a file to an outgoing email and one of two things happens:

• File is under 18 MB — it's delivered as a normal email attachment. The recipient sees a paperclip and a "download attachment" UI in their email client.
• File is 18 MB or larger — webmail uploads it to your Drive in the background and replaces the attachment with a public download link. The recipient gets a normal-looking message with a download button. They never see a giant attachment that their email provider might reject.

This happens automatically. You don't need to think about it. The 18 MB threshold matches what most email systems will reliably accept.

The auto-created link defaults to a 100-download cap. This is a sensible default — enough for forwards, not enough to be a free CDN if the link leaks. You can adjust the cap when you compose.

Attach from Drive

You can also send a file already in Drive without uploading it again. In the composer toolbar, click the Drive icon. A folder picker opens — navigate your folders, pick a file, and a public download link is added to the email. The file isn't duplicated; the link points at the existing copy.

This is useful for files you keep in Drive and send regularly: templates, brand assets, standard agreements, deliverables you've already prepared.

See Sending Large Attachments via Drive for the full flow.

Sync devices from webmail

If you want to connect your mailbox Drive to a desktop sync app (Finder, rclone, Cyberduck, DAVx⁵ on Android, etc.) — or to a phone — you don't have to go to the dashboard for it any more. There's a Sync devices button right in the webmail Drive toolbar.

Click it and the file list is replaced inline with the Sync devices view. From there you can:

• Copy your personal Sync server URL — pre-filled with /dav/files/mailbox-N/, ready to paste into any WebDAV client.
• Click + Add new device, give the device a name (must be unique among your active devices), pick what it's allowed to do (View, Edit, Share, Empty trash — all scoped to this mailbox), and set an expiry. Then Generate password.
• See the resulting one-time password in an amber banner. This is the only time you'll see it — copy it into the sync app right away.
• Browse existing devices, see their status (Active / Expired / Revoked), and click Revoke on any row to immediately invalidate that password.

The breadcrumb at the top changes to Drive › Sync devices while you're in the view. Click Drive in the breadcrumb to go back to your files; the URL bar stays on /webmail/inbox the whole time — no page navigation.

A few things to know about webmail-issued passwords compared to dashboard ones:

• They are always scoped to the signed-in mailbox. You can't grant a sync app access to anything outside your own mailbox Drive from webmail — that's an admin decision in the dashboard.
• The account owner can still see every password you create from the dashboard's /drive/devices view (the admin needs the inventory for audit and offboarding). They can also revoke any of them.
• A per-mailbox cap of 50 devices applies, including revoked ones, so churn-generate scripts can't bypass the limit.

For a full walkthrough of permissions, expiry choices, and which sync app to pick, see the Sync devices page reference and the Drive Sync overview.

Drive and trash

Trash works the same way in webmail Drive as in Account Drive. Delete a file or folder, it goes to your Drive trash, stays for 30 days, then auto-deletes unless you restore it or empty trash. Trash counts against your storage pool until items are permanently gone.

Important: each mailbox has its own personal Drive trash for its own files, but shared folders share the account-wide trash. If you delete a file from a shared folder, that file goes to the account-wide trash, not your personal one — and the account owner is the one who can empty it.

Read Trash and File Restoration for the recovery flow.

Storage in webmail

The pool that webmail Drive draws from is the same one your inbox draws from — and the same one Account Drive draws from. There is no per-mailbox Drive quota separate from your email quota.

If you want a sense of how much you're using, look at the storage indicator in the bottom-left of webmail. It shows your account's total used vs total available. The dashboard Storage card has a finer breakdown by mailbox and category if you need to find what's eating the space.

When the pool is full:

• Drive uploads return "not enough space" errors.
• New incoming email starts to bounce.
• Existing files and emails stay accessible.

The fastest fix is usually to empty Trash (Drive trash and email trash both) and delete a few large files or attachments. If you regularly run close to the cap, the Drive Add-on adds dedicated capacity.

Privacy across mailboxes

A reminder: webmail Drive files are scoped to your mailbox. Other mailboxes in the same account, including the account owner, do not see your personal Drive files. They only see folders that have been shared with the account.

If you accidentally upload something to a shared folder that should have been personal, move it to a personal folder right away. Account-side caching may briefly show the file to other mailboxes for a few minutes after the move; if this matters (sensitive content), force-delete the original from Trash to confirm removal.

What's next

• Sending Large Attachments via Drive — the full composer auto-routing flow.
• Sharing Folders with Your Team — what gets shared with you, what you can share back.
• Public Share Links — share a single file outside the company.
• Drive Sync overview — connect this mailbox's Drive to Finder, File Explorer, your phone, or rclone, so files appear next to your local folders.
• Pooled Storage Quotas Explained — how the pool you share with everyone works.

Mailbox Drive automation

TrekMail Drive is also available through the REST API and MCP server for scoped automation. Agents can use Drive scopes to read folders, upload files, create public share links, run reviewed bulk operations, and check storage status. The MCP server includes 42 Drive tools (files, folders, share links, bulk operations, sync-device passwords, add-on status), and the full TrekMail MCP surface now has 209 tools.

Drive Add-on billing remains user-controlled: purchase, resize, and cancel actions are handled in the dashboard, not through API or MCP write tools. For API and AI-agent integration, see Drive API Overview and Drive MCP Tools Overview.