11 mo. ago • 100%

Proton Mail finally gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

www.theverge.com Proton Mail finally gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

The popular encrypted email client is going mainstream.

Proton @lemmy.world Proton desktop app in beta

Hacker News @derp.foo Proton Mail finally gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

45 comments

lemme guess, Electron

44
- If it were, where is my Linux version
  
  27
- Genuine question, why does it matter? Why shouldn't a project choose a production ready method of creating cross platform compatible code to avoid duplication of efforts and cost?
  
  16
  
  why does it matter?
  
  because most people use more than one program at the same time? fire up that one along with, I dunno, Spotify and Discord and Slack, and suddenly your midrange laptop's RAM is all but gone.
  
  37
  
  Oh the fact it's cross platform is not the issue, the issue is that Electron sucks. There are better alternatives available like Tauri, yet companies keep using Electron because that's what their developers know and they're afraid to try something new.
  
  16
  
  But if the app is just a bundled web browser that goes to a single web page why don't I go to that page with my regular web browser and save the RAM / disk space / bandwidth?
  
  13
  
  Because when I'm looking for where all my RAM went and realise I'm running 7 instances of Chrome browser for no reason. Meanwhile an actual instance of Chrome with ~20 tabs is still a single instance, but with multiple threads.
  
  5
Real desktop app or just the web app in electron?

34
- There's the Github repo
  
  No code in there but clearly states it is made with electron.
  
  10
  
  Good find!
  
  3
- Bound to be Electron. They wouldn't spend the resources to maintain three different apps.
  
  5
  
  I too like to answer people's questions with a complete guess based on my own biases.
  
  4
- I don't believe many of us know that right now.
  
  5
- Which is... Also a real desktop app. This shallow take is getting incredibly old, and doesn't even contribute to actual valuable discussion... If you don't see the value in this being shipped, then why try and tear the value down for others?
  
  I main C#, and even I would rather build cross platform full applications with electron than any of the other options available. I'm definitely choosing it over QT or gtk. Why? Because I can actually ship the project with all the necessary features, in good time, and bake in a great user experience.
  
  That's the difference here. Practical problems vs reality. Shipping the project & features vs not.
  
  Yes, there are many successful applications not built with electron, ofc there are, that's not my point. My point is that the productivity difference is such that it's the difference between not building the thing vs building it and successful shipping it to users. You can argue and shit on the difference, but at the end of the day the above is what really matters.
  
  3
  
  Electron apps are not real apps. They're web apps and in that case I can have even a better experience with a browser since I can use extensions, tabs, saving favorites and so on.
  
  There are really few electron apps that deserve to be called "desktop app" and from what I'm seeing from the screenshots, this isn't one of them.
  
  If I really wanted to have a separate icon and window for this website I can tell my browser to install the pwa icon in the start menu. Wow, instant made desktop app!
  
  2
I guess they'll do anything but get their app on F-Droid.

22
- They will never open their apps. The whole business model of Proton is centered around user lock-in.
  
  Who wants to bet they'll discontinue the IMAP/SMTP desktop bridge after the desktop app has been out for a while? At which point you will not be able anymore to use an IMAP tool to extract your mail and go to another service.
  
  If you store a lot of email on Proton take a backup now.
  
  11
  
  That's my problem with these encrypted services: they lock you in. It makes me feel queasy, but at the same time, it ain't google or yahoo or whatever.
  
  15
- Proton mail, proton vpn are on Fdroid
  
  4
  
  Proton Mail is NOT on F-droid. Only Proton VPN.
  
  7
Linux and F-Droid are neat and all but are almost zero users.

Linux makes up 3% of the desktop market share. You could count ChromeOS as another 3% but that's pointless when using proton. You might as well use Gmail then.

F-Droid doesn't provide any stats at all but almost no one even knows about F-Droid unless you are a massive privacy nerd. Even then at least those I talk to still use Google Play while understanding where their information is going rather than abandoning it entirely.

Proton is trying to be a mainstream solution to encrypted and privacy-focused email. Getting it on Windows, Mac, Android (Google Play), and iOS is far more important to them than getting it on F-Droid, the popular Linux repos, or anything else. For good reason, in my opinion, they are making a business.

12
- Privacy focused people use more often Linux so the percentage of Linux users for proton services might be a bit higher. I don't care about a calendar or mail app but I think a proton drive client for Linux would be important.
  
  17
  
  Privacy focused people use more often Linux
  
  I question the validity of that. We don't really have any stats on that and while at face value, logically it makes sense but a quick search of that exact phrase gives me recommendations for all 3 major desktop operating systems. Cyber Security Experts I would say are a great representative of privacy-focused people and here is a bunch of them saying they wouldn't use Linux as the host OS: https://www.quora.com/Do-cyber-security-professionals-prefer-to-use-Mac-or-Linux-as-a-main-operating-system
  
  While anecdotal and thus can't be confirmed one way or another that privacy-focused people use Linux, it creates enough of a question to outright dismiss taking the statement as pure fact just from the common sense argument.
  
  Lastly, one thing we can do is extrapolate data. ProtonMail is a privacy-focused company with 70 million users. https://www.wired.com/story/proton-mail-calendar-drive-vpn/ So then if ProtonMail is privacy-focused and has 70 million users (far more than the amount of Linux users on Steam as a benchmark.) then why aren't they putting out Linux desktop support or releasing their app on F-Droid. One could extrapolate that this company which is privacy-focused and has 70 million users still doesn't see these things as important because they feel like they couldn't get enough users from supporting these things.
  
  Potentially though, it might be bad to assume Proton is acting towards its own userbase and maybe for some reason it's actively acting against it. I feel like in that case, if I was a daily Linux user, I wouldn't want to use proton.
  
  5
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  2
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

Proton’s desktop app, on the other hand, will let you access emails offline without having to set up that bridge, which should be more convenient.

(The program will cache a large number of emails for offline use, Proton says.)

It’s important to note that you’ll still need internet access to both send and encrypt your emails on Proton.

But the offline feature will let you view and draft emails while traveling, during a power outage, or any other situation where you don’t have access to the internet.

Proton is also bringing encrypted auto-forwarding to paid users, both on its desktop and browser versions, though the encryption for forwards will only apply when the forwarded emails go to other Proton users.

The company says it has made improvements to Proton Calendar, too, including a fully searchable web version.

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