from the team:
Hi everyone,
We're happy to announce that the new, rewritten Proton Mail Android app is now available to all Proton users on the Google Play store!
For everyone on de-Googled Android devices, you can find the APK file here.
We’ve improved performance and reliability, with up to a 5x reduction in crashes since we started rolling out the updated version. Since the first beta, we’ve added back key features:
🗒️ create and manage your contact group lists
🔑 send password-protected emails (i.e. protect your communication with non-Proton accounts)
💣 set an expiration date to your emails
🗓️ jump directly from your inbox to your Proton Calendar
🌗 switch between light and dark mode
🔒 protect the app with biometric lock
This development provides a solid foundation for delivering new features faster in the future.
We’re looking forward to your feedback, and we’re keeping an eye on our UserVoice to help us decide which features to prioritize next.
Best,
The Proton Team
Why didn't they put it on F-Droid? And does Proton mail support connecting via SMTP or POP from third party clients, like every other mail service does, yet?
The native Proton applications are needed due to the encryption of Proton Mail. 3rd party clients do not work for this reason.
At least on Windows it works with Thunderbird.
Only because of the bridge, which is handling the encryption part. That works on Mac as well as on Linux also.
However an integration to 3rd party clients without such an encryption layer (Bridge) doesn't work.
For those unaware, proton mail bridge is a program that sets up a local proton proxy that decrypts the emails then serves them up via a local imap server. Thus the "bridge." So Thunderbird isn't pulling from proton, the bridge is pulling the encrypted mailbox and decrypting, Thunderbird pulls from local unencrypted bridge.
Thanks for the further information and participation in the thread here.
Doesn't this kinda defeat the point?
The objective is to always keep your email store encrypted in transit and on proton's server. This is a decryption relay to be used on trusted systems, decrypted with your key. It then serves it up to your email app with startls encryption and an app password, keeping the local store encrypted. Then you can set up your email client to not download a local copy, as you already have a local copy on your local proton store served by your local proton proxy server. I'd argue its more secure than accessing it through a browser, as there is less likely to be malicious add-on activity.
https://proton.me/mail/bridge