Status Update – April 2025

Filen Blog

• 9 min read
Status Update – April 2025

Hey everyone,

Spring has arrived – and with it, a whole bunch of changes here at Filen. We've been working hard behind the scenes to take your experience with our platform to the next level. From the future of our blog to improvements in mobile, backend upgrades, and the long-awaited newsletter – there’s a lot to catch up on. Let’s dive in.

📖 Table of Contents

The new Filen Hub

For quite some time, our blog has lived in its own little world under blog.filen.io. While it served its purpose, it often felt too disconnected from the main platform. Last year, when we launched our redesigned website, we also added a simplified blog section that highlighted the latest posts – a good first step, but still not quite what we had in mind.

User feedback was mixed. Although traffic increased, we noticed that important updates still weren’t reaching everyone – especially those not active on social media. This led us to rethink our approach to internal communication and user information access altogether.

The result?
We're saying goodbye to the old Filen Blog and welcoming The Filen Hub.

The Filen Hub will be fully integrated into our main site at filen.io/hub and will serve as the central go-to destination for everything you might want to know as a Filen user. Here’s what to expect:

  • A redesigned layout featuring a top section for featured blog posts, ensuring that important news remains front and center.
  • Tile-based categories beneath the fold, organizing content by topic for quick and easy access. These categories will always show the five most recent entries and link to subpages displaying full chronological archives – think all Status Updates or Feature Spotlights in one place.
  • A powerful new search function, making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for.
  • "Tiles" where you'll find links to specific topics, such as categories containing our open source code, Filen docs, feature requests and the whitepaper. Or a Filen Help category with support, knowledge base, and FAQ sections. The exact layout hasn't been finalized yet.

We’re currently at around 95% and can’t wait to hear your thoughts once it goes live. No official launch date yet – but soon.

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    • The Filen Newsletter – Why is it delayed?

    For those who’ve been asking: yes, the Filen Newsletter is finally coming very soon.

    After several prior announcements and a few unfortunate delays, the newsletter is finally ready to go. It would’ve been out sooner, if not for the switch from the old blog system to the new Filen Hub — a necessary upgrade that once again pushed things back a bit.

    Anyway, once it’s live, you’ll see a little newsletter icon right inside the Hub, letting you subscribe to one or both of the following Newsletter:

    • Tech & Updates Newsletter – Everything about our products, including future Status Updates in email form.
    • Marketing & Sales Newsletter – Announcements on sales, promotions, and upcoming events.

    You’ll be able to manage your subscriptions at any time via your Hub Profile – a new lightweight profile system specifically for the Hub. This is not linked to your regular Filen Cloud Account and is used solely for managing newsletter preferences and enabling post comments on the Hub.

    Each newsletter will include an unsubscribe link, as well as a quick rating option, allowing you to provide feedback with just one click, helping us improve dynamically.

    As always, details are subject to change as we polish things up, but we’re excited to bring you this new way to stay in the loop.

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    • What’s New in the Upcoming Filen Mobile App Update

    Development on our next-generation mobile apps for Android and iOS continues steadily. While there’s nothing wildly new to announce just yet, we’re getting closer to the beta phase and will begin inviting testers from our sign-up pool to join a private Discord group soon.

    Here's an overview of confirmed features coming in the new update:

    • Global Search - Seamlessly find files across your entire cloud.
    • Improved Automatic Camera Upload - Smarter, faster, and more reliable.
    • Brand New Media Player - Enables powerful, near-unlimited direct streaming of both audio and video files (common formats).
    • OS-Native UI/UX - Each version of the app will adopt the design language of its respective OS. The iOS app will feel like iOS. The Android app like Android. Simple as that.
    • Better Previews & Swipes - We’re aiming for a native-gallery-like feel for photo and video browsing. Markdown previews, a code editor, and improved document viewing (PDF, Word, etc.) are all included too.
    • Massive Performance Boost - From gallery loading to file previews, everything is up to 100% faster based on initial internal testing. Of course, performance will always depend on your device, but the improvements should be noticeable across the board.
    • Completely New Home Screen - The previous version didn’t meet our standards, so we rebuilt it. The new layout will improve clarity, navigation, and access to your key categories like “Recents,” “Favorites,” and “Shared.”
    • General updates - Of course, the new mobile apps will also include all general service updates, such as support for empty files and more.

    We’ll share more details as we get closer to release, so stay tuned.

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    • Backend Upgrades & Rust SDK

    Backend Security
    Beyond the visible updates, a significant amount of our time this past month has gone into strengthening the core backend systems that keep Filen running. Security is at the heart of everything we do, and that means regularly reassessing, rethinking, and reinforcing our infrastructure, even if the improvements aren’t immediately visible to end users.

    filen-rs – Rust SDK Progress
    Meanwhile, our Rust SDK, filen-rs, is moving forward steadily. As with any early-stage project, there have been a few bumps along the way, but overall development is going well. We’re holding off on sharing the repository publicly for now, as we want to publish it on crates.io first. But once that’s done, likely by the next update – we’ll make everything accessible for the Rustaceans among you.

    A big shoutout goes to our (not-so-new-anymore) dev Enduriel, who has brought a fresh perspective and initiative into our security review process. His passion for cybersecurity and transparency fits right in with our long-term goals – and you can expect this focus to remain a top priority moving forward.

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    • Rclone Public Beta is live!

    Rclone support has been one of our most requested features — and it’s now available to everyone. Our custom Rclone build (based on v1.69) includes a Filen backend and can be downloaded as a single executable for your OS.

    Why it matters:
    You can now use Filen for encrypted backups, scripting, cron jobs, and more. Power users and automation fans, this one's for you.

    📥 Try it out:
    ➤ Rclone Release (GitHub)
    ➤ General Rclone Docs
    ➤ Filen-specific Setup Guide

    What we’re looking for:
    We're especially interested in how Rclone handles shared/linked files and folders. Test it, tweak memory settings, and let us know how it performs.

    Need help or found a bug?
    Enduriel (our Rclone lead dev) is active on our Discord
    You can also reach us via support — it all goes straight to the dev team.

    Thanks for helping us shape this integration!

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    • Bug Bounty Program: Transparency & Structure

    We are updating our Bug Bounty Program to make things clearer and more structured for security researchers. The goal is simple: define how we classify reports, what rewards researchers can expect, and how we evaluate submissions.

    By introducing clearly defined severity levels and corresponding reward ranges, we’re aiming for better transparency and more predictable outcomes for everyone who contributes to making Filen more secure.

    💶 About the Rewards

    We’re still a small-ish, independent team and that means we don’t have the kind of budget big tech companies do. Still, we take security seriously and do our best to offer fair and proportional rewards based on the severity, impact, and quality of each report.

    📊 Severity Levels and Reward Ranges

    • 🟢 Low (Class 4)
      Minor or mostly theoretical vulnerabilities.
      Examples: Clickjacking, missing security headers.
      Reward: €0–€50
    • 🟡 Medium (Class 3)
      Valid issues with limited exploitability or real-world risk.
      Examples: Reflected XSS, edge-case CSRF.
      Reward: €50–€100
    • 🟠 High (Class 2)
      Security issues with potential user impact or data exposure.
      Examples: Stored XSS in internal interfaces, IDOR, low PII vulnerabilities.
      Reward: €100–€500
    • 🔴 Critical (Class 1)
      Severe issues that could affect system integrity or expose sensitive data under specific conditions.
      Examples: Authentication bypass, database access, high PII vulnerabilities.
      Reward: €500–€1,000 (up to €1,500 in exceptional cases)

    📝 How We Review Reports

    We evaluate submissions based on:

    • The practical impact and exploitability
    • Clarity and reproducibility
    • Whether the issue was already known

    Even if the impact seems minor, responsible disclosure is always appreciated. Every valid report helps us improve.

    🔗 Want to report something?
    Full details and guidelines are available on our Bug Bounty Program page. For sensitive issues, please reach out via filen.io/contact or email marketing@filen.io. PGP: filen.io/pgp

    Thanks to everyone who’s submitted reports so far, your work directly contributes to a safer platform.

    We will also create a separate post about this so that everyone is aware. It will have a permanent position on the new File Hub.

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    • Final Word

    That’s it for this month’s update. We’re excited about everything that’s coming and we can’t wait to share even more with you soon. As always, we appreciate your support, your feedback, and your patience.

    Stay safe,
    – Team Filen

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