is an Electron-based unofficial desktop client for ProtonMail and Tutanota end-to-end encrypted email providers. The app aims to provide enhanced desktop user experience enabling features that are not supported by the official in-browser web clients. It is written in TypeScript and uses Angular.
The download page with Linux/OSX/Windows installation packages is here.
Pacman
and Snap
packages are also available for installing from the following repositories (both repositories are being maintained by @joshirio):
- Cross platform. The app works on Linux/OSX/Windows platforms.
- Multi email providers support. ProtonMail and Tutanota at the moment.
- Multi accounts support per each email provider including supporting individual entry point domains.
- Automatic login into the app with a remembered master password using keytar module (keep me signed in feature).
- Automatic login into the email accounts, including filling 2FA tokens. Two auto-login delay scenarios supported in order to make it harder to correlate the identities, see the respective issue.
- Encrypted settings storage with switchable predefined key derivation and encryption presets. Argon2 is used as the default key derivation function.
- Native notifications for individual accounts clicking on which focuses the app window and selects respective account in the accounts list.
- System tray icon with a total number of unread messages shown on top of it. Enabling local messages store improves this feature (how to enable), see respective issue.
- Switchable view layouts (full, tabs and dropdown). See details here and screenshots in the images folder.
- Offline access to the emails. The local store feature enables storing your messages in the encrypted
database.bin
file, so you could view your messages offline, perform a full-text search against them and export them to EML files. Enabled since v2.0.0 release. - Batch emails export to EML files. Feature released with v2.0.0-beta.4 version, requires
local messages store
feature to be enabled (how to enable). - Full-text search. Enabled with v2.2.0 release. See the respective issue for details.
- Built-in/prepackaged web clients. The built-in web clients are built from source code, see respective official Protonmail and Tutanota repositories. See 79 and 80 issues for details.
- Configuring proxy per account support. Enabled since v3.0.0 release. See 113 and 120 issues for details.
- Starting minimized to tray.
- Closing to tray.
- Regardless of the platform you are working on, you will need to have Node.js v12 installed. v12 as it's recommended to go with the same Node.js version Electron comes with. If you already have Node.js installed, but not the v12, then you might want to use Node Version Manager to be able to switch between multiple Node.js versions:
- Install NVM.
- Run
nvm install 12
. - Run
nvm use 12
.
- Some native modules require node prebuilds files compiling and for that Python and C++ compiler need to be installed on your system:
- On
Windows
: the simplest way to install all the needed stuff on Windows is to runnpm install --global --production windows-build-tools
CLI command. Tutanota and ProtonMail web clients projects require bash for building, so a few more steps need to be fulfilled:- Install bash then check the path of bash ex:
C:\\Program Files\\git\\bin\\bash.exe
. - Execute
npm config set script-shell "C:\\Program Files\\git\\bin\\bash.exe"
command.
- Install bash then check the path of bash ex:
- On
Linux
:python v2.7
,make
and a C/C++ compiler toolchain, likeGCC
are most likely already installed. Besides keytar needslibsecret
library to be installed. - On
Mac OS X
:python v2.7
and Xcode need to be installed. You also need to install theCommand Line Tools
via Xcode, can be found under theXcode -> Preferences -> Downloads
menu.
- On
- Clone this project to your local device. If you are going to contribute, consider cloning the forked into your own GitHub account project.
- Install Yarn.
- Install dependencies running
yarn --pure-lockfile
. - Build app running
yarn run app:dist
. - Build a package to install running
yarn run electron-builder:dist
command to build Windows/Mac OS X package and one of the following commands to build Linux package:yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:appimage
yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:deb
yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:freebsd
yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:pacman
yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:rpm
yarn run electron-builder:dist:linux:snap
- If you don't need a package to install, but a folder to execute app from, simply run
yarn run electron-builder:dir
command. - Binary executable, whether it's a folder or package to install, comes into the
./dist
folder.
To recap, considering that all the described build requirements are met, the short command to build let's say Arch Linux package will be yarn --pure-lockfile && yarn app:dist && yarn electron-builder:dist:linux:pacman
.
If you want to backup the app data these are only files you need to take care of (files localed in the settings folder):
config.json
file keeps config parameters. There is no sensitive data in this file, so unencrypted.settings.bin
file keeps added to the app accounts including credentials if a user decided to save them. The file is encrypted with 32 bytes length key derived from the master password.database.bin
file is a local database that keeps fetched emails/folders/contacts entities if thelocal store
feature was enabled for at least one account. The file is encrypted with 32 bytes length key randomly generated and stored insettings.bin
. The app by design flushes and loads to memory thedatabase.bin
file as a whole thing but not like encrypting only the specific columns of the database. It's of course not an optimal approach in terms of performance and resource consumption but it allows keeping the metadata hidden. You can see some details here.log.log
file keeps log lines. The log level by default is set toerror
(seeconfig.json
file).
It's recommended to perform the following actions before uninstalling the app:
- If you had the
Keep me signed in
feature enabled (see screenshot), clickLog-out
action in the app menu (see screenshot). That will remove locally stored master password (done with node-keytar). You can also remove it having the app already uninstalled, but that would be a more complicated way as you will have to manually edit the system's keychain. - Remove settings folder manually. You can locate settings folder path clicking
Open setting folder
app/tray menu item (see screenshot) or readingapp.getPath(name ="userData")
relatedapp.getPath(name)
section here.