ElectronMail
An unofficial, open-source desktop client for ProtonMail built with Electron, offering enhanced features like offline access and full-text search.
What is ElectronMail?
ElectronMail is an unofficial desktop client for ProtonMail, built using Electron, TypeScript, and Angular. It provides a native desktop application experience for accessing ProtonMail accounts, with enhanced features like offline email access, full-text search, and encrypted local storage that are not available in the official web clients. The project aims to improve user privacy and control while maintaining compatibility with ProtonMail's secure email service.
ProtonMail users who prefer a dedicated desktop application over web browsers, especially those needing offline email access, advanced search capabilities, or enhanced privacy features like encrypted local storage and proxy support.
Developers choose ElectronMail for its open-source nature, reproducible builds, and feature set that extends beyond ProtonMail's official clients, including full-text search, offline access, and multi-account management with per-account customization, all while prioritizing security and user control.
Overview
Unofficial ProtonMail Desktop App
Use Cases
Best For
- Accessing ProtonMail accounts with full offline email reading and search
- Performing advanced full-text searches across email body content
- Managing multiple ProtonMail accounts from a single desktop application
- Enhancing email privacy with encrypted local storage and proxy routing
- Customizing the ProtonMail interface with dark mode and per-account CSS
- Automating login processes with system keychain and 2FA support
Not Ideal For
- ProtonMail users who prioritize official support and guaranteed API compatibility for all features
- Environments with strict resource constraints where Electron's memory and CPU overhead is unacceptable
- Scenarios where offline email access is unnecessary, as core features like batch operations and search rely on enabling local storage
- Teams requiring integrated calendar or drive functionality beyond basic email, as the app focuses primarily on mail
Pros & Cons
Pros
Enables full-text search across email body content and JavaScript-based filtering, a feature not available in official ProtonMail web clients, as detailed in the README's feature list.
Stores emails locally in encrypted files using Argon2 for key derivation, allowing offline viewing and search without compromising privacy, with data kept in the database.bin file.
Supports managing multiple ProtonMail accounts with per-account proxy settings, API entry points, and custom CSS injection, enhancing privacy and user control.
Integrates with system keychains via the keytar module for automatic app and account login, including 2FA token filling and persistent sessions to avoid repeated logins.
Cons
As an unofficial client, it lacks official ProtonMail support and may break with API changes, relying on community maintenance and reproducible builds for trust.
Building from source requires Node.js v24/LTS, Python, C++ compilers, and other dependencies like libsecret, making it challenging for non-technical users, as outlined in the build instructions.
Built on Electron, the app consumes significant memory and CPU resources compared to lightweight or native applications, which can be a drawback on low-spec systems.
Many advanced features, such as batch operations and offline search, depend on enabling local storage, which not all users may want, and attachments are not stored offline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
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