from the team:
Hi everyone,
We’re happy to announce that we’ve now launched the Proton Mail macOS and Windows apps out of beta.
Thanks to your valuable feedback, we’ve added more than 20 new features and fixes from the release of the first beta versions of the apps.
The new Proton Mail desktop apps are here to make your private inbox faster and more productive with:
🌓 Desktop-optimized design that syncs with light & dark mode
📆 Integrated Proton Calendar in app switcher
🎭 Events and hide-my-email aliases in side-panel
🔔 Dedicated app notifications
♻️ Automatic updates for the latest features & security improvements
➕ And much more
🐧If you’re a Linux user, you can join the desktop app beta here:
https://proton.me/support/mail-desktop-app
With the release of the desktop apps, Proton Mail is now available on all major desktop and mobile platforms, offering over 100 million people worldwide a private alternative to Big Tech, regardless of their device.
➡️ Learn more and get the desktop apps here: https://proton.me/blog/proton-mail-desktop-app
Access to the desktop apps is included in all Proton premium plans. Free plans come with a 14-day trial.
As always, we welcome your feedback and we’re grateful for your continuous support.
Stay safe,
Proton team
From the team:
Our team is currently working on resolving the connection issues experienced by our Linux users, so the app will be temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience.
edit:
It should be fixed.
Ah, looks like an Electron app. Disappointing, but unsurprising.
Could you explain for a layman why this is disappointing?
deleted by creator
It is truly uneducated. While it’s true that the “UI” part is web you can interface with the OS level api so it’s not that different than a real software
As others said, it’s basically chrome bundled with the website code so it looks like an app. And while Electron does offer devs the ability to do things a webapp can’t, it still brings the chrome browser engine along with all the inefficient ram usage and potential for security flaws that implies.
And also ironic. Because they’re called Proton and they’re using Electron to make their app (it’s chemistry, ♀️🐶)
They could have at least used Tauri.
Not familiar with Tauri. Guess I’ll go google that, but what’s your reason for suggesting it as a preferable alternative?
Tauri uses the system’s native web rendering engine instead of shipping Chromium with the whole app. As a result you get much smaller app bundles (like 10 MB for a complex app), better startup times and less RAM usage. The downside is that you need to do slightly more testing but the end result is worth it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=-X8evddpu7M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Electron app
Shame. I do my best to avoid the resource bloat of electron apps whenever possible.
I mean, when my own iron - dual 12-core 24-thread Xeon E5, 128Gb RAM - sees non-trivial impacts from just two or three Electron apps, I do my best to nip that in the bud by avoiding all that crap.
What’s so hard about building a traditional app? With DotNet you could build a single program for all three platforms, and you could bundle DotNet up into that app such that it doesn’t even need a separately-installed sandbox like Java does.
As a .net dev I agree this would be ideal, but I don’t do UI much these days so I don’t know what’s out there for frameworks right now.
I do know one thing that’s out there in spades tho, and that’s “full stack” JS devs. :P That’s probably what’s “so hard” about building a traditional app.
There aren’t any great cross platform UI frameworks for .net. There are a few out there, but they are not as robust as what you can do with stuffing a react app into electron.
Tried the app (Windows).
Firstly, it uses lots of CPU on a pretty powerful machine (7945hx). It at least takes 1-3% idling and up to 40-60% while doing basic tasks.
Secondly, I haven’t found jack shit related to background processing for notifications and updates. Wouldn’t this be the primary reason to have an app - to get status updates immediately?
Thirdly, it’s just a web version with exactly the same UI, exactly the same settings and so on. It literally works better in Firefox than the app itself.
I don’t see any reason to use the app over web version in a browser. No, really.
Doesn’t work for me at all on Ubuntu, but nice to see they’re finally getting a Linux client out.
It should be fixed. Can you try again?
Late to reply but the issue was fixed.
Could you report that to the support team please?
I like Proton, but I’ve never wanted a desktop app. Thunderbird is great. It’s super annoying to need the external connection client. I’d rather they just spent the energy on native Thunderbird support without a second GUI.
Lol y’all work with the feds
Probably an electron app.
