Proton Mail Updates & Release Notes

It’s easier to tame your inbox when emails are pre-sorted into categories like primary, social, promotions, or newsletters. Now you can cut through the noise while protecting your privacy with Proton Mail Categories.

This optional new feature gives you one more way to stay organized in Proton Mail — you can already add folders and labels, unsubscribe from newsletters with one click, and set up automated filters. With Categories, your messages get sorted automatically before clutter gets a chance to take over.

Try Categories now (new window)

Not on Proton Mail yet? Create a free account.

What are Categories in Proton Mail?

Categories are a new view in your Proton Mail inbox designed to give you better visibility of which messages need your attention. Every incoming email lands in one of these categories:

• Primary: For personal and work messages, plus important updates and notifications
• Social: Updates from social media platforms and activity
• Promotions: Deals, discount codes, and holiday sales
• Newsletters: Non-promotional content and news you signed up for
• Transactions: Bookings, billings, and orders
• Updates: Automated confirmations and alerts

For new users, Categories are on by default, but you can turn them off in your settings. If you already have a Proton Mail account, we’ll ask whether you want to turn Categories on. You can customize your experience by choosing the categories you want to see.

If an email lands in the wrong category, just move it to a new one. This automatically updates the filter for next time.

Stay organized, without the surveillance

Big Tech email providers like Gmail and Outlook also give you categories, but there’s a privacy cost.

For companies like Google and Microsoft, their goal isn’t to keep you secure and private, it’s to monetize your attention with ads or train their AI models. Google even displays ads in your inbox, turning your Promotions and Social tabs into a billboard for marketers. Even if you pay for Google One, it doesn’t change the business model. Google is an advertising surveillance machine.

Proton’s business model aligns our incentives with yours because we’re 100% funded by our community, not by advertisers. Enabling Categories doesn’t change any of this. Your inbox remains protected by zero-access encryption, and emails you send with other Proton users (or using password protection) are end-to-end encrypted.

See what a clean inbox feels like

Ready to use Categories? Go to your inbox and open your emails from the Primary, Social, Promotions, or Newsletters tabs. You can easily move emails if you feel another category is more appropriate.

For customization, go to Settings → Messages and composing to choose which categories to display, toggle notifications, or show an unread count. If you prefer the old Proton Mail view, you can disable categories anytime. Find out more about using Categories.

Try Categories now (new window)

Not on Proton Mail yet? Create a free account.

Businesses often stick with their tech platforms longer than they want to because it’s difficult to switch. Today, your team can migrate in six easy steps.

Whether you use Microsoft or Google, you can now ditch Big Tech and move your email, calendar, and contacts to Proton’s privacy-first ecosystem in a few simple steps with Easy Switch for Business.

In June, we introduced Easy Switch for Business to give organizations using Google Workspace a safe place to run a business, because Google is a nightmare for compliance, it gives AI access to user emails, and it’s a single point of failure.

Over the next few weeks, we’re extending that roll out to organizations using Microsoft Outlook — a company whose track record on privacy has long been questioned. Like Google, Microsoft got around customer consent with a controversial feature users rightly identified as a kind of spyware. More recently, its Copilot flex routing launch caught European businesses off guard when they discovered the promise of a “European cloud” was broken overnight with an automatic opt-in change.

Privacy shouldn’t be an accepted trade-off for productivity. Use Easy Switch for Business to move your email, calendar, and contacts to Proton’s privacy-first ecosystem in just a few simple steps.

How Easy Switch for Business works

Migrate your company from Gmail or Outlook to Proton Mail in six simple steps.

Here’s how:

• Choose what comes with you. Emails. Calendars. Contacts.
• Connect Proton to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
• Set up your domain. Your team can work across both while you make the move. You can even use a custom domain from Porkbun or Squarespace with Proton Mail.
• Pick the accounts you would like to bring over.
• Onboard your team on Proton.
• Say goodbye to Big Tech. Private. Secure. Sent from Proton.

Switching from Microsoft Outlook

Learn more: How to switch your business from Microsoft Outlook to Proton using Easy Switch

Switching from Google Workspace

Learn more: How to switch your business from Google Workspace to Proton Mail using Easy Switch

Easy Switch for Business automates and guides you through the entire process. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Your existing platform and Proton run in parallel during the transition, so your team keeps working as normal while everything moves over.

Why businesses are leaving Google and Microsoft

The core of your business is how you communicate with your team and clients through your company inbox and calendar. That’s why over 100,000 organizations — from newsrooms and law firms to tech companies, consultancies, non-governmental organizations and government agencies — have already moved to Proton.

Here’s what these organizations tell us:

• They want to decouple from US Big Tech. The risks of vendor dependency — AI training, warrantless surveillance, geopolitical pressure — are well documented. Proton is headquartered in Switzerland, outside US jurisdiction, so laws like FISA and the CLOUD Act that give American authorities the legal ability to access your business data, don’t apply.
• They want stronger data protection. Google and Microsoft can access your data, share it with third parties, or leak it in a data breach. Microsoft actually shares its customers’ data with outside vendors called subprocessors for vague purposes. Proton’s use of end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption by default means your data is not accessible to us, and we can never hand it over or accidentally leak it to third parties. Proton is open source, and anyone can audit our code to validate that our encryption works as described.
• They want a business continuity fallback. Because Microsoft is based in the US, it is subject to sanctions and export controls that could interrupt your service access. Already, the US administration has used this power to restrict access to international organizations, and 74% of European businesses say they’re worried about American kill switch powers. Many customers start by running Proton in parallel with their existing provider — a backup that keeps running if an outage, ransomware attack, or geopolitical disruption hits. It’s also how most CISOs we work with begin testing a migration.
• They want to strengthen trust with customers. For some businesses, using Proton is a trust signal as much as a security decision. You can point clients, partners, and regulators to Proton’s public source code and audits, encryption by default, Swiss jurisdiction, and nonprofit ownership structure.
• They want a provider that can’t be acquired. Proton is owned and governed by a nonprofit foundation. You won’t have to worry about private equity shenanigans, endless price increases, or your data ending up in the ecosystem or jurisdiction you were trying to avoid.

Discover true privacy and choice

Your business data has value precisely because it reflects how your company thinks, operates, and competes. It deserves to be protected. With Easy Switch for Business, you can leave Gmail or Outlook without disrupting a single workday in the process.

Proton Mail is part of a secure suite that also includes encrypted calendar, drive, docs, sheets, video conferencing, password manager, and VPN. Founded by scientists who met at CERN in 2014, we created Proton to build a better internet that protects data by default with strong encryption.

With Proton Mail:

• No one else can access your data. Proton uses end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption, meaning we can’t access your emails, files, contacts, or calendar items. And it’s safe from hackers in the event of a data breach.
• Your inbox is yours. In addition to strong encryption, Proton Mail implements additional protections to keep marketing trackers and hackers out of your inbox. This includes our advanced anti-phishing features and link tracking protection.
• You’re shielded from government surveillance and kill switches. Because Proton uses strong encryption, we’re not able to share your file contents with third parties, including government authorities. And as a Switzerland-based company, we aren’t subject to US data requests or kill switches.
• AI is available, but optional. Our Lumo AI platform is available as an add-on in Workspace Premium. So you only pay for it if you actually want it.

Learn more about Proton security

Join more than 100,000 businesses protecting their intellectual property from surveillance with Proton Mail.

FAQs

Should I expect my team to experience any downtime?

No. Your current provider and Proton stay in sync during the transition, so there’s no disruption to your day-to-day work.

Can I test before switching fully?

Yes. The dual-send period lets you run both systems in parallel, so you can test everything before making the full switch.

Is my email still encrypted if I send emails externally to Gmail or other providers?

All the emails you send externally (such as to contractors, vendors, or freelancers) will be protected in transit (using TLS) and encrypted on Proton’s servers. But your recipient’s email provider (whether that’s Gmail, Microsoft, or another provider) will still have access to those emails. To keep emails end- to- end encrypted, , no matter what provider they use, send a password-protected email from your Proton mailbox.

The case for leaving Gmail is well-established. Google scans all your Gmail activity to build advertising profiles that follow you across the internet and tie all of your activity to you.

Breaking up with Gmail overnight and making the transition to a privacy-first email provider, however, might not seem so easy, because it means informing all of your contacts and updating your email across possibly dozens of other services. To make switching from Gmail easier, you can now send emails from your Gmail address directly inside Proton Mail.

When you activate this feature, your latest Gmail messages will be imported into Proton Mail, so you have your recent conversations and updates right there with you. New emails received in your Gmail will then continue to appear in your Proton Mail inbox automatically.

Unlike Gmail, Proton doesn’t scan your emails, serve you ads, use your data for AI training, or build profiles on your correspondence. Your inbox is yours, not a data source. And the more you shift to your Proton address, such as services like Netflix and Amazon, the less Google has on you.

A more private way to use Gmail

This new feature allows you to check your Gmail inbox directly from Proton Mail, meaning you don’t need to go back to the Gmail app, which brings about several privacy benefits.

Proton strips trackers, ads and spam from your emails, giving you greater privacy compared to Gmail, which is basically adware. The Gmail app gathers an immense amount of data about you, and by Google’s own admission (new window), uses your approximate location to show you more relevant ads, all of which is prevented by switching to the Proton Mail app.

Google will no longer be able to use your email activity, such as which emails you read and engage with, to build a profile about you. When your friends and family use Proton Mail too, messages exchanged between Gmail addresses connected to Proton become end-to-end encrypted, so Google will not be able to read your data anymore. That’s why it’s worth inviting the people you email most to join Proton and connect their Gmail accounts.

Connect Gmail in Proton Mail now

Not on Proton Mail yet? Create a free account.

This feature is rolling out gradually. If you don’t see it in your Proton Mail settings yet, it’s on its way.

Set it up easily

1. Open Import via Easy Switch in your Proton Mail settings.
2. Connect your Gmail account.

Find out how to move from Gmail to Proton Mail.

Connecting your Gmail does not give Google access to your Proton Mail inbox, so your privacy remains fully intact and protected.

An easier transition towards ditching Big Tech

For privacy and ethical reasons, it is better to ditch Big Tech entirely. Using Gmail from within Proton Mail does not solve some of the longstanding privacy issues with Gmail. Google is still reading every email received by your Gmail account, including any sensitive personal communications you might receive there.

Once your important accounts are updated and Gmail is only getting your spam, you can disconnect Gmail from Proton Mail entirely for a cleaner inbox experience and delete your Google account.

Connect Gmail in Proton Mail now

Not on Proton Mail yet? Create a free account.

In addition to Gmail, you can import your emails from Outlook, Yahoo and Apple Mail, using Easy Switch or our import tool, making it easier to consolidate your digital life in one place.

By using Gmail from within Proton Mail, you can gradually transition away. Every account you update to use your Proton Mail address instead of Gmail is one less source of data for Google’s gigantic data harvesting machine.

Note: Post-quantum protection is being rolled out gradually in Proton Mail. If you do not see the option in your account yet, there is nothing you need to do. It will become available soon.

The quantum era is no longer a distant thought experiment. Quantum computers — advanced computing systems designed to solve complex problems that classical computers cannot — are not yet capable of breaking the encryption that protects email today. But the risk is real enough that security teams, standards bodies, and technology providers are already preparing for what comes next by adopting post-quantum encryption.

Post-quantum protection is now available in Proton Mail, on all plans including free. Once enabled, Proton Mail will generate and use post-quantum-ready keys for new encrypted emails to protect your personal messages and business communications against today’s threats and a future where current public-key cryptography may no longer be enough.

What’s changing in Proton Mail

Proton Mail has long used OpenPGP with ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) and RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) keys to protect encrypted email, which remain secure against the computers of today. But large-scale quantum computers could break those schemes using algorithms such as Shor’s algorithm, a quantum computing technique designed to solve the kinds of mathematical problems that make RSA and ECC secure.

To prepare for that future, Proton Mail now supports encryption keys that withstand post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Find out how to enable post-quantum protection in Proton Mail with just a few simple steps.

Enabling PQC helps protect new encrypted emails going forward, and we plan to re-encrypt older emails in the future. As with existing keys, PQC keys can still be managed in familiar ways. You can generate more PQC keys later, and those keys can be marked obsolete or compromised just like RSA or ECC keys.

As part of this work, we are also adding support for OpenPGP v6, the newer framework that enables modern algorithm support, including post-quantum cryptography.

We are also standardizing quantum-safe encrypted email across the open email ecosystem, including with projects such as Thunderbird, so these protections can work between providers — not just within Proton — and help people stay safe no matter which email service they use.

Why prepare now for post-quantum attacks?

The quantum era may not be here yet, but an attacker can collect encrypted data today and keep it for the future, hoping to decrypt it once quantum capabilities improve and proliferate. That is one reason the migration has already started across the industry.

The most important security transitions usually start before the wider public is paying attention. By the time they become obvious to everyone, the organizations that waited are already behind.

With post-quantum cryptography support in Proton Mail, we are taking a proactive step to help protect encrypted email against the threats of tomorrow, without compromising the privacy guarantees that matter today.

In September last year, we launched a major update of Proton Mail for iOS and Android.

On the surface, the new apps deliver a modern design, better performance, and offline capabilities—but there is a lot more than meets the eye. Behind the scenes, the apps are a complete rewrite of Proton Mail on a novel technology stack, a project that goes by the internal name of Engineering Transformation. The term novel is deliberate, because — to the best of our knowledge — this has been the first time the chosen technology has been used in the context of an established production application.

This article aims to shed light on the fascinating journey our team has been through in the making of this revolution, and to answer some of the questions our community has asked us along the way. First and foremost, the rationale behind is the need to change the status quo.

How it all started

The realization that things needed to change hit on a Friday evening in October 2023. It materialized with surprising clarity, but not out of the blue: it was the culmination of months spent trying to find a common denominator for the seemingly unrelated problems affecting our users’ experience with Mail and Calendar mobile products.

At the risk of oversimplifying, we can summarize the pain points in three areas:

• Quality: Mail iOS and Mail Android, taken in isolation, fell short of expectations in terms of quality and performance.
• Feature gap between iOS and Android: Some features were only available on one platform, with no clarity on when the other would catch up.
• Engineering velocity: Key updates and long-awaited features were not delivered in a timely manner across both platforms.

Some of the issues extended beyond mobile, and answering those would require a digression from the technology domain into the fascinating problem space of organizational scaling, and in particular fast-growing tech startups. But the fragility of the mobile ecosystem was very much rooted in technology and architecture.

Scaling mobile engineering

Scaling mobile engineering comes with a unique set of challenges that are meaningfully different from scaling backend and web teams. These differences stem from platform fragmentation and the operational realities of the mobile ecosystem. Mobile teams typically need to support multiple platforms across a variety of operating systems and devices (phones, tablets, sometimes wearables). iOS and Android come with their own programming languages, frameworks, and tooling, which leads to large amounts of duplicated effort: multiple teams, duplicated codebases, and constant trade-offs between platform-specific and product-related work. Keeping the product offering in sync requires an enormous amount of coordination.

What is an industry-wide challenge was particularly acute for Proton. Functionality apps such as Mail and Calendar are inherently more complex than most mobile applications on the market. When you add on top the additional layer of client logic required to handle end-to-end encryption, you end up with particularly “thick” clients. Back in the day, the Android team was busy rewriting Mail to better quality standards—an investment that took the better part of 18 months. iOS was also in dire need of re-architecting, not to mention Calendar. The cost of duplication was eating into all of our engineering resources, and it became clear we were not going to succeed by doing more of the same.

The best thing about recognizing you are stuck is that it acts as a forcing factor to think outside the constraints of your current status quo. What would we do if we could start anew, freed from the burden of the choices and commitments that led us here? When you take a closer look at how successful companies dealt with this issue in the previous decade, you realize they followed one of only two possible strategies:

• They threw money at the problem, building ever bigger teams as high operational costs were offset by a combination of bottomless investments and/or lavish returns. This was not an option for Proton’s VC-free business model: we can’t compete with the spending of ad-based, investor-backed competitors.
• They re-engineered their apps to get rid of the waste, meaning building apps using (as much as possible) a shared codebase.

With option 1 being a non-starter, the path ahead was set.

A means to an end: choosing the right tech stack

The next step was to choose a tech stack that could actually do the job.

Over the past 15 years, cross-platform mobile development has been flooded with “one-size-fits-all” solutions: HTML5, Xamarin, React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, and many others. Each arrived with the same promise—to replace native development outright. In practice, most either failed outright or succeeded only within tightly constrained problem spaces. There is no universal abstraction that makes platform differences disappear: anyone who has shipped and maintained large mobile applications knows this. The only reliable way forward is to work backwards from concrete requirements rather than forward from tooling trends.

We translated that end goal into a set of non-negotiable requirements (1) that any chosen solution had to satisfy, and used them as our guiding framework throughout the evaluation process:

• Costs and timescales: The stack had to materially reduce the cost and time required to ship, maintain, and evolve Proton Mail across iOS and Android.
• User experience: It had to preserve near-native performance and interaction quality—anything less was a non-starter.
• Strategic future-proofing: The solution had to be long-lived. We were intentional about avoiding third-party frameworks that would make our roadmap dependent on another vendor’s continued support.

The tension between the first two constraints is the industry’s version of the holy grail: “A cross-platform solution that delivers the performance and user experience of native applications.”

We were skeptical from the start that React Native or Flutter—the two dominant cross-platform frameworks at the time—could meet this bar. Still, we validated that skepticism by building proof-of-concept implementations of Mail’s message list view.

React Native quickly revealed its limitations. Scrolling through a large dataset made the cost of its interpreted execution model painfully obvious. Flutter performed better, but the UI remained visibly non-native, especially on iOS. More importantly, Flutter is a proprietary framework controlled by Google, which has a history of abandoning in-house technologies and had recently laid off a large portion of the Flutter team. For a product with long-term security and reliability guarantees, that level of external dependency was unacceptable.

Kotlin Multiplatform was the next candidate. It is a compelling option—particularly for organizations with deep Android expertise—but it ultimately fell short for our use case. The absence of a shared UI layer, questions around maturity, and the additional overhead introduced by its execution model outweighed its benefits.

At this point, the conclusion was clear and aligned with our initial intuition: the only architecture that consistently gets close to the desired outcome is a deliberately mixed stack. Native UI on each platform – Jetpack Compose on Android, SwiftUI on iOS – backed by a shared business-logic layer written in a high-performance, low-level language. This approach has a track record: Dropbox famously used C++ to share business logic across mobile platforms before abandoning it in 2019 due to the operational and cognitive cost of the language.

By the end of 2023, Rust had clearly emerged as the successor in the lineage of systems programming languages.

Rust occupies the same performance envelope as C++, but without many of its historical liabilities. It provides strong memory safety guarantees without garbage collection, enforces thread-safe concurrency at compile time, and is supported by a large, highly competent open-source ecosystem. Just as importantly, Rust integrates cleanly with native mobile languages—Swift and SwiftUI on iOS, Kotlin and Jetpack Compose on Android—making it a pragmatic choice for sharing core logic without compromising the UI layer.

This was not a risk-free decision. At the time, there were few examples of large-scale, consumer-facing mobile applications built on a Rust-centric architecture, and Rust experience within the team was limited.

But meaningful innovation rarely happens in low-risk territory. The real challenge was not Rust itself, but organizational inertia—shifting from proven, conservative approaches toward deliberate experimentation, guided by clear constraints and engineering judgment.

The new Proton Mail: outcome and learnings

Let’s fast-forward to today and see how the gamble played out.

The diagram below represents Mail mobile’s architecture. The Rust core is responsible for the entirety of the application’s business logic. We pushed the use of Rust beyond its usual applications (networking, storage, algorithmic computation) all the way into the handling of complex navigation logic. A case in point is the logic governing the infinite scrolling of the message list. While unorthodox, this proved key to achieving our objective of maximizing code reuse. As a result, almost 80% of the codebase is now shared across iOS and Android.

Architectural Diagram courtesy of Leander Beernaert, 2026

Did this translate into faster, higher-quality time-to-market? While it’s still too early for a final verdict, the early signs have been very encouraging:

• In the two months following the release, the team managed to maintain a weekly cadence of feature updates across both platforms (a total of 12 feature releases).
• We closed the feature gaps between platforms, bringing long-awaited features to Android such as snooze, calendar RSVP, and swipe-to-next-message.
• Even at this early stage, the new codebase has proven more stable than prior generations on both platforms: the iOS crash rate is 0.05% (down from 0.12%), while Android’s is back to a historical baseline (0.19%). This is a strong endorsement of Rust’s runtime stability.

Support also scales more effectively under this approach. It is often faster to identify and resolve a single, shared root cause than to chase down superficially similar issues arising from slightly different logic flaws spread across two independent codebases. We found empirical confirmation of what had previously been a working hypothesis while fixing a class of category synchronization issues affecting the logic that underpins the app’s offline capabilities: one root cause, one solution—represented in the diagram above by the Rebasing module shipped with version 7.6.2.

The other side of the coin?

• Bugs and regressions are likely to have a wider impact and affect users on both platforms. You can’t really have it all—but you can definitely mitigate the risk by over-indexing on end-to-end (E2E) testing.
• As with any slicing of a user-facing solution along a horizontal technology divide, there is a risk of creating knowledge silos and losing some engineering focus on end-to-end user experiences. You need to be aware of this and intentionally mitigate the risk. Among the most effective measures:
  • Align sub-teams to deliver features rather than technology layers.
  • Train mobile engineers to become “full stack”, i.e. able to debug, support, and engineer across both the Rust codebase and the native platforms.

What’s next for Engineering Transformation

From the very outset of this project, it was clear that the stakes extended well beyond Proton Mail alone. Successfully applying this technology stack to Proton’s flagship application was always intended as the first step in a longer journey—one that would ultimately see this approach rolled out across the rest of our mobile ecosystem.

That scenario is now unfolding. As I write this article, our Account and Payment SDKs, as well as the next generation of Proton Calendar mobile apps, are being rewritten in line with this new technical direction.

This marks the beginning of a second wave of engineering transformation—an evolution that expands the technology blueprint with an architectural framework designed to make component reuse easier, not only across platforms but also across products. While this transition will not happen overnight, it is fundamental to building the seamlessly integrated, privacy-first ecosystem our customers expect Proton to be.

(1): Simon Lewis, “A strategy for application implementation on multiple platforms”, 2023.

Inbox clutter can be overwhelming. But you can’t just toss everything, either, or you might miss a good offer or a critical update. That’s why we developed the Newsletters view.

Located in your sidebar, the Newsletters view gives you a focused space to manage everything you’re subscribed to, separate from your regular inbox — even things you didn’t ask for or might have forgotten. Browse through promos when you want to, all in one place. Cancel everything you don’t want with a click.

The Newsletters view is designed to help you cut through clutter, reduce distractions, and stay in control of your subscriptions.

No clutter, no FOMO, just the emails that matter in your inbox.

Try it now

See and manage all your email subscriptions in one place

Promos, job alerts, store updates, and social media notifications can overwhelm your inbox fast. But here’s the paradox: While most of us want to declutter, we also hesitate to unsubscribe entirely. What if we miss something important? What if that discount is actually worth it?

The Newsletters view in Proton Mail organizes them all in one place so you can clearly see what mailing lists you’re signed up for — and easily decide what you want to get rid of, and what’s worth keeping.

Two separate tabs in Newsletters give you quick access to active subscriptions and those you’ve already unsubscribed from. You can see how often someone emails you, spot newsletters you’ve stopped reading, and quickly decide what to keep or stop receiving.

Besides unsubscribing, you can view everything a sender has ever sent you, then either clean it up in one go or manage individual emails — move, delete old ones, or apply rules for future messages — all without leaving the page.

See how to manage your subscriptions in the Newsletters view.

Built for privacy, like everything at Proton

Unlike third-party inbox cleaning tools that require full access to your email account, the Newsletters view is built directly into your inbox, so your data stays private and secure.

As always, this new feature is grounded in Proton’s core principles: no tracking, no profiling, and no targeted ads. Your inbox should work for you, not for Big Tech.

Ready to clean up your inbox? Head to the Newsletters view in Proton Mail and see how easy it is to take back control.

We launched Proton Mail with a simple yet bold goal: to give people a secure, private way to communicate — free from Big Tech’s data-driven profit model. Our goal continues to be to build an encrypted email and calendar that makes it possible to replace Gmail and Google Calendar.

As we look ahead to winter, we’re accelerating development to make your experience faster, more reliable, and even more responsive. From behind-the-scenes performance improvements to efficiency features that simplify daily tasks, here’s a preview of what’s coming next for Proton Mail and Proton Calendar.

Our journey so far this year

In early 2024, we launched the new Proton Mail desktop app for Windows and macOS, with a Linux version in beta. We also introduced new tools like Dark Web Monitoring to help you stay ahead of potential data leaks and Proton Scribe, a private writing assistant that enhances productivity while maintaining Proton’s strict privacy protections.

Additionally, we released highly requested features like calendar availability, email forwarding, email groups (new window), and the ability to create hide-my-email aliases directly within Proton Mail, making it easier to manage multiple identities and protect your privacy. Other quality-of-life improvements included the option to minimize the left panel on the web app and support for dynamic font sizes on iOS, ensuring a smoother and more personalized user experience.

Across all platforms — web, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS — we’ve also introduced performance enhancements to keep Proton Mail and Proton Calendar fast and secure no matter where you access them.

A look at Proton Mail’s winter product roadmap

We’re working hard to make every aspect of your daily email tasks smoother and more efficient.

Proton Mail is improving spam and phishing detection algorithms to reduce misclassifications in order to keep your inbox cleaner and more accurate. Spam filtering is a critical, but often overlooked aspect of a secure email experience, and while we are already among the best in the world at this, we are continuing to make improvements.

Expanded language support

To make Proton Mail accessible to even more users worldwide, we’re adding support for Finnish and Hindi, furthering our mission of global privacy.

Windows desktop notifications

We’re introducing desktop notifications for Windows users on the Proton Mail desktop app, allowing you to view unread counts and open messages directly from your desktop for more convenient access to new emails.

Set Proton Mail desktop app as default email

You’ll be able to set Proton Mail’s desktop app as your default email app on all desktop operating systems, making it easier to manage all your messages in one place.

Spam and trash management on Android (update: released)

We’re adding an option on Android (new window) that lets you toggle automatic deletion for spam and trash email after a certain amount of time, bringing Android in line with iOS (new window) and web. This will give Android users more control over their inbox hygiene.

Bottom bar customization for Android

We’re adding the ability to customize the actions in the bottom bar on Android for both conversation and single message views.

Early access to a revamped iOS app

And as winter wraps up, we’ll be offering early access to a brand new iOS app, delivering a substantial boost in performance. You can expect lightning-fast page loads, enhanced offline support, and a brand-new interface designed for seamless navigation. The new iOS app will provide the foundation for bigger features in 2025 which we won’t be building on the existing codebase.

A look at Proton Calendar’s winter product roadmap

In the coming months, we’re making it faster to navigate and schedule events, with popular features that make organizing your life even simpler. (Update: Many of these performance improvements have been implemented as of January 2025.)

Improved calendar integration with Proton Mail

We’re enhancing Proton Calendar’s integration with Proton Mail. Building on the existing flow, these improvements will allow you to manage invites directly from the Proton Mail Android app where this functionality is currently missing.

Advanced event scheduling options

We’re working on improving the user experience with support for more complex event frequency rules. Soon, you’ll have the flexibility to set events with patterns such as “first day of the month” and other custom recurrence options, giving you more control over your schedule.

iOS widget (update: released)

A top user request, the iOS widget for Proton Calendar is coming soon. This widget provides an at-a-glance view of your schedule, making it easier to stay on top of your day while on the go.

Video conferencing integration (update: released)

We’re introducing the ability to link video conferencing accounts from external providers to Proton Calendar, so you can create video links for events or join video conferencing calls from within Proton Calendar.

Expanded event editing on iOS

You’ll be able to edit, create, and delete events in shared calendars directly from your iPhone. This feature makes coordinating schedules with family, friends, and colleagues more convenient.

Custom responses for event invites

You’ll be able to add personalized notes when accepting or declining an invite — ideal for letting others know if you’ll be arriving late or need to adjust meeting times.

And even more on the horizon: Tasks, search, and offline mode

To support much-requested features like tasks, search capabilities, and offline access, we’ve started work on our next generation of Proton Calendar apps for iOS and Android, which we aim to release toward the end of 2025. In order to avoid duplicating effort, we have been building new features directly into the new app so we can bring you the new app faster

Building on this new platform will enable us to deliver these and other highly requested features more quickly and with improved performance.

Thank you for building a better, private internet with Proton

At Proton, we’re on a mission to make privacy the default on the internet. Every update and feature we introduce is designed to give you greater control over your personal information while enhancing your experience across all Proton services.

As we enter the new year, we remain dedicated to hearing from our community to guide what we build next. We invite you to join us by sharing your thoughts on X (new window), Reddit (new window), and UserVoice (new window). We are here to listen and do our best to serve you.

Thank you for supporting our mission. Together, we are building a better internet where privacy is the default.

You might think protecting your online privacy is a personal responsibility, but there’s a good chance that your loved ones are still entangled with Big Tech companies. These companies exploit your friends and family’s most sensitive, valuable data to show them tracking-based advertising or expose them to unscrupulous, information-scraping AI tools.

If a partner or family member is still using Google to send emails, store documents, or offload photos, it’s likely they’re inadvertently exposing the sensitive, valuable information you took precautions to protect.

That’s why we’re introducing Proton Duo, a new plan designed to make online privacy easy for two people with 2 TB of storage space. You both get to enjoy your own encrypted email address, calendar, secure storage for files, photos, and passwords, and a VPN to browse securely. With Proton Duo, you will have the peace of mind that comes with knowing your digital lives are truly private.

For a limited time only, we are offering Proton Duo for $14.99/month with a one-year plan: That’s $60 in annual savings. This is a forever discount, so if you sign up for the promotion, you’ll keep this price forever.

Online privacy made easy

Proton makes online privacy easy. Our apps use end-to-end and zero-access encryption, meaning that no one — not even Proton — can access you or your partner’s information without your explicit permission. Encryption works automatically in the background, so you can send emails, plan your day, or share files as usual while we handle the rest.

Proton Duo includes:

• Up to 2 users
• 2 TB of storage space, with 15 GB of bonus storage every year
• Everything that’s in Proton Unlimited
• Full access to Proton Mail, Proton Drive, Proton Calendar, Proton Pass, and Proton VPN

And you will save $60 yearly compared to two Proton Unlimited subscriptions.

Proton Duo gives you separate login information, so you can keep your emails, calendars, and files to yourself. You get to decide what to share with your partner or family member. You’ll both enjoy online privacy made easy and get access to unique perks:

• Get a personal email identity: Share a custom email domain for a more personal family identity to send messages in Proton Mail.
• Back up your files and photos: Back up your files and photos with 2 TB of end-to-end encrypted storage space. Access them from any device in Proton Drive.
• Share your calendar: Keep track of schedules and plan events and vacations with a shared Proton Calendar.
• Secure your passwords: Share a Proton Pass vault with login details for shared online accounts and subscriptions.
• Collaborate on documents: Plan vacations, manage your budget, or brainstorm together in real-time with Docs in Proton Drive.
• Browse the web privately: change your IP address and your location, avoid targeted ads and stay safe from malware.
• Keep your family safe: The Proton Sentinel account protection program and Dark Web Monitoring can protect you from account takeover attacks and data breaches.

Get started today with Proton Duo

Start enjoying the benefits of the Proton Duo plan today. Here’s how to get started:

• Sign up for Proton Duo or upgrade your existing plan.
• If your partner doesn’t use Proton yet, have them sign up for the Proton Free plan.
• Invite them to join your Duo plan.

Our Easy Switch tool will help you and your partner effortlessly move existing emails, calendars, and contacts from Gmail and other providers so you can all make the jump to Proton in just a couple of clicks.

If your needs evolve, you can upgrade to the Proton Family plan to get more storage and protect other family members’ data with Proton.

Making the internet better for everyone

At Proton, we’re on a mission to make the internet better for everyone by offering privacy-focused alternatives to Big Tech — such as the recently launched photo backup or document editor in Proton Drive — and making privacy more accessible with plans that best fit your needs, like Proton Duo.

Unlike other free services that make you pay with your data, you pay Proton to give you security and privacy, which means we’re only incentivized to keep your information safe. Our first and only obligation is to you — and everyone in the Proton community. We recently moved to a not-for-profit structure with the launch of the Proton Foundation to cement our commitment to your privacy even further.

By choosing Proton Duo, you’re not only giving yourself and your partner or family member control over your most sensitive, valuable information, you’re also helping build the internet of the future, where privacy is the default.

Most of us send emails every day. Finding the right words and tone, however, can take up a lot of time. Today we’re introducing Proton Scribe, a smart, privacy-first writing assistant built right into Proton Mail that helps you compose and improve your drafts. It lets your team save time writing emails, and you will protect your most sensitive, valuable data. Proton Scribe was designed for privacy and can be run locally, so your data never leaves your device.

If you’re on a Mail Essentials, Mail Professional or Proton Business Suite plan, you can open your composer, click the pencil icon, and try Scribe right now. For Duo, Family, Visionary and Lifetime subscribers, Scribe is included for free with your plan. Learn more in our support article.

Over 50,000 businesses already trust Proton to protect their communications because of our end-to-end encryption and advanced security features. In addition to security, productivity is a top priority for business users of Proton. In fact, a writing assistant was one of the most requested features in our recent survey, so we’re launching Proton Scribe to help you and your team stay productive while protecting your data.

Turn your ideas into emails

Proton Scribe starts the writing process so you don’t have to face a blank page. Whether you’re reaching out to plan a team event or kicking off a big project, Proton Scribe will save you the time and effort you would have spent writing that first draft. Your emails will be professional and polished — even if your first language is not English.

Proton Scribe is built right into your Proton Mail composer. You can easily access the tool using the pencil icon. Simply type in what you’d like to write about, and it will create a draft for you.

Use the Shorten or Proofread options to improve your drafts so they’re free of typos and grammatical errors. If you’re writing to an important client or formal institution, you can also easily improve the tone of your email with the Formalize option. You can then refine and edit it, and send it off when you’re happy with the result.

Productivity with privacy

More teams are using tools to improve their writing at work, whether it’s online grammar checkers or AI assistants. Composing and editing emails with these tools can be risky, as your sensitive company or customer data could be shared, misused, or used to train language models. In our 2024 community survey, more than 75% of Proton’s business users said they are interested in generative AI tools, but most were also concerned about a lack of data protections. Scribe was designed to be a secure alternative.

Proton has been researching privacy-protecting AI for many years, and in 2023 we launched Proton Sentinel, our first feature that leverages AI in order to provide enhanced protection against account takeover for users at greater risk of cyberattack. We have also developed our own internal AI models for improving the answer quality and response times of customer support, while preserving privacy by not sending data to third parties like OpenAI. This work has been developed by an independent internal team, which has now incorporated these learnings on privacy-first AI into Proton Scribe.

As a composition tool, Scribe does not train on your inbox data — it cannot because of Proton Mail’s zero-access encryption. Scribe relies on open source code and models, and is itself open source and therefore available for independent security and privacy audits. Scribe is also covered by Proton’s stringent privacy policy, and once you’re done drafting your emails, nothing you typed gets logged or saved.

Much like other Proton services, Scribe goes to extra lengths for maximum privacy. Scribe is the first mass-market AI tool that can be run entirely locally on your device, ensuring no data ever leaves your device. You can find the device and browser system requirements here, which we will expand over time. If you prefer, you can also run Scribe on our secure, no-logs servers.

With Scribe, you are always in control of your data. You choose who on your team gets access to Proton Scribe, you can always review and revise Scribe outputs before sending any email, and you can keep it all local on your device. Given the choice between privacy and productivity, businesses have historically had to pick productivity. With Scribe, our goal is to make it possible for you to have both privacy and productivity.

Help your team be more productive, starting with email

Proton Scribe is just the latest of many features we’ve recently launched to give businesses the ease-of-use they expect, while protecting their customer data with end-to-end encryption. This includes shared calendar availability, custom workspace branding, the Proton Mail desktop app, and more. In addition to features designed to save your team’s time, Proton Business also gives you the keys to stay secure. Unique features such as our Proton Sentinel account protection program, for example, combine AI and human analysis to provide elevated account security.

Proton business plans let you secure your communications and save you time with smart features just like Proton Scribe, and plenty more to come. As always, let us know your feedback and we’ll work on incorporating them quickly.

Your email address is your online identity, and you share it whenever you create a new account for an online service. While this offers convenience, it also leaves your identity exposed if hackers manage to breach the services you use. Data breaches affecting online services are increasingly common, with tens of billions of records already leaked this year to the dark web, where credentials are often bought and sold.

If your credentials leak, timely alerts are critical so you can take action to secure your accounts, prevent identity theft, and avoid financial losses. In recent months, we’ve released multiple security features designed to fortify your digital identity against attacks, and today we’re excited to launch another feature for everyone with a paid Proton plan: Dark Web Monitoring for credential leaks. You’ll find it in our new Security Center in Proton Mail, and in your Security and Privacy settings.

Dark Web Monitoring scans hidden parts of the internet for Proton Mail email addresses that have ended up in illegal data markets. If our system detects a breach that affected one of your accounts used to sign up to a third party website, you’ll receive a Security Center alert along with actions you can take to mitigate the risk.

Data breaches have become unavoidable

The number of data breaches in the USA alone exploded from 1,802 in 2022 to 3,205 in 2023, affecting more than 353 million people. In January 2024, researchers found a database exposing more than 26 billion records. Known as the “Mother of all Breaches”, it contained records from thousands of previous breaches.

Such data is often offered for sale to criminals on a part of the internet known as the dark web, a small portion of the deep web that’s inaccessible with standard web browsers and requires special software. While the dark web can be an invaluable connection to the outside world for those living under repressive regimes, its encrypted nature makes it the perfect place to hide a cybercrime hub.

With so many data breaches, including of major websites generally considered safe, protecting your accounts is no longer a question of whether your credentials will leak, but whether you are prepared with additional safety measures in place to prevent damage. Proton offers a robust safety net to protect our community, of which Dark Web Monitoring for credential leaks is just the latest example.

How does Dark Web Monitoring work?

Proton’s dark web detection continuously scans dark web hubs associated with illicit activities, such as hacking forums and markets, searching databases for emails contained in data breaches that use any of Proton’s 19 email domains (for example, @pm.me, @protonmail.ch, etc.) as well as any other information associated with those email addresses (like stolen credit card details, for example). We use our own threat intelligence datasets that are also enriched with data from Constella Intelligence, a leader in digital threat management. No user data is ever shared with third parties, but we do analyze reports from third parties any time they find leaked information or data stolen in a hack from a third-party online service that’s tied to a Proton Mail email address or a Proton Pass alias.

Our system will alert you if it finds leaked details of any of your accounts for third party websites. You’ll receive comprehensive information about the breach, including what data was compromised and the affected service, if available. Additionally, we explain what you can do to safeguard your digital identity and minimize the risks of future breaches.

Know which accounts needs protecting

Dark Web Monitoring will show all known breaches that have affected your accounts over the last two years. While all breaches carry risks, we highlight the breaches you should prioritize with a red indicator. These breaches require immediate attention, typically to change passwords that were exposed as plaintext or weakly hashed (for example, using MD5).

Orange notifications show breaches that affected your accounts but where either no password was leaked, or where your password was encrypted or strongly hashed (for example, with SHA256 or bcrypt). Note that these breaches can still expose sensitive personal information.

The future of Dark Web Monitoring

This is just the beginning of our plans for the Dark Web Monitoring feature. In the future, we aim to watch out for more of your data and notify you on your mobile device as well.

Notifications

Dark Web Monitoring will soon send notifications to your Android or iPhone so you can take action on affected accounts more quickly.

Custom domain monitoring

In addition to monitoring for Proton Mail email addresses found in data breaches affecting third-party websites, we will also detect breaches that affect custom domain emails, so that professionals and organizations that use Proton Mail also have comprehensive protection for all their associated accounts and sensitive data.

Monitoring of external email addresses

Recognizing the interconnected nature of online identities, Proton will also expand Dark Web Monitoring to optionally include recovery email addresses, as well as Proton VPN, Proton Drive, and Proton Pass accounts registered with external email addresses.

Comprehensive data security

In an era where data breaches and identity theft have unfortunately become increasingly prevalent, Proton is doubling down on security features. Our Proton Sentinel high-security program combines machine learning and human security analysts to monitor for account takeover attacks and shut them down swiftly. We also offer the ability to generate hide-my-email aliases in Proton Mail, which you can use when creating new accounts. You’ll receive email as normal through these aliases, but if one is ever exposed in a data breach, you can delete it and create another without ever revealing your true email address. We also strongly recommend setting up multi-factor authentication for all your online accounts and using strong, unique passwords.

You may not be able to avoid data breaches, but thanks to Dark Web Monitoring and other Proton security features, you can mitigate risks and stay in control of your digital identity.

In 2014, Proton Mail was introduced as a web app, revolutionizing how we think about email privacy.

Today, we’re excited to broaden the horizons of secure communication by launching the Proton Mail desktop app. Anyone can now use the new Proton Mail desktop app for Windows and macOS, with a Linux version in beta.

These new additions complement our existing web and mobile applications, ensuring you can keep your emails private across all your devices without being confined to a web browser.

You can get the app right now. And if you’re on a free Proton plan, you’ll receive a 14-day free trial to get started

A fast, focused email experience

At Proton, we believe you should be able to access your email however you want to without compromising your privacy. If you use Outlook, you’re potentially sharing your data with Microsoft’s 801 external partners. Or, if you prefer accessing your emails from Chrome, you risk exposing your browsing history to advertisers or having your data exploited by malicious browser extensions.

In addition to privacy concerns, accessing your email from a browser can make it hard to focus on the task at hand. You use your browser for much more than email, so it’s easy to miss new messages or reminders in between all the open tabs for social media, online shopping, and more. With this in mind, we wanted to give you the best email experience that’s not only safe but distraction free.

With the new Proton Mail desktop apps, you get a dedicated email experience, allowing you to enjoy all the productivity innovations of our web app, allowing you to go through your emails and events faster without the potential distractions that pop up anytime you open your browser. And, of course, your privacy remains protected at all times.

The Proton Mail desktop apps are optimized to work with your device, meaning they can sync themes with your desktop’s light or dark mode, display notifications natively, and offer instant switching between mail and calendar. Despite these new additions, our desktop apps remain recognizably Proton. Anyone who has used our web app before will instantly feel at home.

If you’re not already using Proton, it’s easy to switch, no matter which email service you’re currently with. With our Easy Switch tool accessible right from the Proton Mail app, you can import your messages from Outlook or Gmail, forward any new messages you get on Gmail, and more.

New app, same trusted Proton security

The new Proton Mail desktop app inherits from a decade of security enhancements we built for our web application. That means Proton Mail for Windows and macOS maintains our commitment to security and privacy with several key features: zero-access encryption and end-to-end encryption, protection against trackers and phishing attempts, and our high-security account protection program, Proton Sentinel.

The ability to use a separate app from your browser for your email and calendar offers additional security benefits, such as protecting your emails or events from rogue browser extensions and allowing automatic updates without relying on your browser.

We can now deliver new features to you on Windows, Linux (now in beta), macOS, and our web app at the same time — starting with the new Security Center. It lets you easily create hide-my-email aliases to protect your identity, from the Proton Mail web and desktop apps.

Get the Proton Mail desktop app today

Anyone can now try our dedicated desktop app on Windows and macOS. If you have a free Proton Mail plan, you can try it for 14 days for free. The Linux app is also available in beta at the link below.

As always, please let us know what you think and what you’d like to see next. A desktop email app has been one of the most popular requests from the Proton community, so we hope you enjoy it and look forward to your feedback.

Your email address is like your digital passport, a unique identifier for all the services you use online. But unlike a real passport, your email address is often publicly available for anyone to send you malware, bombard you with spam, or track your behavior.

Today we’re introducing a new way to protect your identity, control spam, and prevent phishing with hide-my-email aliases in Proton Mail. These are unique, randomly generated email addresses you can give out instead of your real email address, which stays private. Additionally, hide-my-email aliases are already available in Proton Pass.

You can create up to 10 hide-my-email aliases with the Proton Free plan, or upgrade to Proton Unlimited to create as many as you need. You’ll find your hide-my-email aliases in our new Security Center in Proton Mail.

Read below to learn more about this new privacy feature and situations where you might want to use it.

Get Proton Mail

A simple way to keep your email address private

If you use the same email address for every account, you’re putting your online identity at risk. Most online services are vulnerable to cyberattacks, and hackers are becoming more relentless. Once your email address is in the wild, it can be added to spam lists or sold to marketers. You could also be targeted with spear phishing attacks.

Hide-my-email aliases are unique, randomly generated email addresses you can provide instead of your real email address. You can receive emails to these aliases within your Proton Mail account and reply without revealing your identity.

Unlike your primary email address, you can easily deactivate aliases if they’re ever revealed in a data breach or start receiving spam.

• Online purchases: Companies love to build a profile of you based on your spending habits. Providing an email alias protects you from being profiled and targeted.
• Account creation: Whenever you create an account for an online service, you can provide a hide-my-email alias to avoid being tracked or attacked by hackers after a data breach.
• Newsletters: Email aliases make it much easier to unsubscribe from newsletters you no longer want (or never wanted in the first place). Simply deactivate the alias.

Plus, aliases help you organize your inbox. You can filter, sort, and label emails sent to your aliases in specific folders.

How to use hide-my-email aliases

It’s easy to create and use email aliases in Proton Mail:

1. Create a Proton Mail account if you don’t already have one.
2. Look for the new shield icon on the right side panel of the Proton Mail web app (new window). This is your new Security Center, where you’ll find your hide-my-email aliases.
3. Create hide-my-email aliases with a single click. Once created, your new alias is automatically placed in your clipboard and ready to share.

You can also generate email addresses instantly when creating new online accounts using Proton Pass. Visit our Pass email aliases page to learn more.

Using Email Aliases in Proton Mail

Fight online security threats, starting with your inbox

The new Security Center is the home of hide-my-email aliases, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s also where you can take simple steps to secure your account, whether it’s setting up two-factor authentication or a recovery phrase. And the Security Center gives you instant access to our Proton Sentinel account protection program, which monitors for suspicious account activity and blocks account takeover attacks.

Since Proton is 100% funded by our community, we prioritize your security and privacy above all. This new addition to Proton Mail is another step toward giving you total control over your email and building a future where privacy is the default.

After years of research by our cryptography team, you can now set up secure and automatic email forwarding in Proton Mail. No other large-scale email service offers a seamless email forwarding feature that preserves end-to-end encryption.

This is one of our most highly requested features from our professional and business accounts, so we’re launching email forwarding today for anyone with a paid Proton Mail subscription.

With email forwarding, you can automatically send incoming mail to any other email address. When forwarding to Proton Mail email addresses, messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one (including Proton) can see the contents of your messages. But you can also set up forwarding to external addresses, including CRM and customer support software. Along with SMTP submission launched earlier this year, organizations can now fully integrate Proton Mail with third-party services for both sending and receiving emails.

Get started with email forwarding

You can create and manage forwarding rules from the Forwarding and auto-reply section in your Proton Mail settings.

To create a forwarding rule, just enter the email addresses you’d like to forward from and to.

You can also add more specific forwarding rules so that only certain emails get forwarded based on the subject, sender, or attachment. Adding conditions like these is optional.

Once you’ve added a rule, we’ll send a confirmation email to the address you’re forwarding to. Once the recipient confirms, you’re all set.

For more detailed instructions, you can check out our support article.

How email forwarding can improve your workflows

Email forwarding makes it easier to collaborate and share information with your colleagues. It also lets you integrate Proton Mail with third-party platforms like Zendesk and other customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Forward emails to relevant team members

Organizations often have role-specific email addresses, such as an accounting mailbox like [email protected]. Vendors and other teams send invoices to the accounting mailbox instead of emailing individual team members. The downside of this is that multiple team members might need to check that particular inbox.

With email forwarding, you can automatically forward emails sent to accounting to the appropriate team members. You can also apply conditional filters. For example, if one team member exclusively handles a particular vendor, you can forward all emails from that vendor to only that team member.

You can also use forwarding when team members are on holiday. In addition to using our auto-reply feature, team members can add a forwarding rule to forward urgent or important emails to their manager or coworkers.

Integrations with CRMs and other enterprise applications

You may use CRM software to manage your sales pipeline or support tickets. Proton Mail’s SMTP submission feature already allows your CRM to send emails through Proton Mail. Now, with email forwarding, you can fully integrate Proton Mail with third-party services to send and receive emails.

You can set up a forwarding rule from a contact address in Proton Mail to your CRM to generate the appropriate ticket or request.

The world’s first large-scale email forwarding that maintains end-to-end encryption

Messages sent between Proton Mail accounts are always end-to-end encrypted by default. But to maintain end-to-end encryption for messages forwarded to other Proton users presented a technical challenge. We needed to re-encrypt messages for different recipients without the server being able to access the content. Our cryptography engineers have made this possible using a method called proxy re-encryption.

In the illustration above, Alice, Bob and Charles all use Proton Mail. Alice sends emails to Bob. Bob then wants to forward the emails he receives to Charles. To do this, Charles needs to decrypt the emails, which were originally encrypted by Alice to Bob’s public key.

Bob generates two specific secret elements:

• A new private key that will be used to decrypt the forwarded emails. It is sent to Charles using end-to-end encryption.
• A proxy factor uploaded to Proton servers using TLS

This proxy factor (a very large integer) gives Proton the ability to convert any PGP message encrypted with Bob’s public key into another PGP message that can be decrypted with the newly generated private key, now held by Charles. Using this factor, Proton cannot decrypt the message or convert it to another key. This allows Bob to securely forward emails to Charles without making privacy compromises.

It’s important to note that Alice might not be using Proton Mail. If that’s the case, Alice’s email provider most likely has access to the email she sent, but Proton does not. The incoming message is instantly encrypted when Bob receives it using Bob’s public key. If Bob forwards the email to Charles (or any other Proton Mail user), the rest of the above scheme would apply.

It’s also important to emphasize that if you forward emails to a non-Proton address, it will disable end-to-end encryption for all the emails to the address you forwarded from. You can enable end-to-end encryption again once you no longer want to forward to a non-Proton email address. Note: This will not affect the encryption of other addresses in your Proton Mail Account. So for organizations, we recommend setting up a dedicated email address for forwarding outside of Proton Mail.

Secure email for your business

At Proton, our top priority is to improve the security and privacy of the tools you use every day. Your email is your online identity, and business accounts are particularly targeted for attacks and vulnerable to data breaches.

Features like encrypted email forwarding are just one of the ways Proton Mail secures your organization. We’ve introduced advanced phishing protection, the high-security Sentinel program, protection from tracking links, and many other unique security features.

It’s all part of our mission to build an internet where privacy is the default and you’re in control of your data. If you’re ready to switch to better security and privacy online, you can create a new Proton Account for free. If you’re a business who wants to try our email forwarding, you can find the plan that’s right for your organization or contact our sales team.

In recent months, we’ve brought a lot of big additions to the Proton ecosystem, such as Proton VPN for Business, Proton Sentinel, Password Sharing in Proton Pass, and Proton Drive photo backups in beta. By comparison, we haven’t said a lot about Proton Mail and Proton Calendar, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been idle or moved our focus away from Proton’s main services.

Instead, over the past three months, we intentionally took a different strategy for Mail and Calendar. Rather than focusing on big ticket items, we compiled a list of requests from Proton community members on how Proton Mail can make your life easier. This involved aggregating statistics from Reddit, Twitter, and UserVoice, and also analyzing data from over 100,000 support tickets dating back several years. Then we began diligently working through the list.

Why focus on small improvements rather than attention-grabbing launches? Because ever since our 2014 community crowdfunding campaign, Proton has been community supported. We don’t make money through ads and we have no venture capital investors, so you, the community, are the only people we answer to. This list reflects that as it is composed entirely of your feedback.

Today we’ve reached the milestone of 75% completion of our list, and we would like to share with you some highlights of what we’ve implemented, as well as a glimpse of what we’ll tackle next.

Completed in Proton Mail

• Quickly find attachments with the “has file” filter, and preview them right from the message list.
• The new Proton Mail app for Android is now in beta, totally rebuilt for stability and reliability.
• Get a clearer view of your inbox with spam and trash emails no longer included in the All Mail folder.
• Block senders in the iOS app to stop them from ever again reaching your inbox.
• Rearrange sidebar folders, so you can keep only what’s important to you.
• Skim through your inbox and identify updates from your favorite senders by seeing their image from your inbox on iOS.
• Search message content, now available for everyone on the web.
• You’re protected from tracking links, preventing companies from following what you do online.
• Turn on or off the automatic deletion of trash and spam messages after 30 days on iOS.
• View your unread messages count right from your browser tab icon.
• Apply strikethrough formatting in the email composer.
• Switch to our latest additional languages: Finnish, Hindi, and Swedish.
• Enjoy more visual space for email content in the web app.
• Improved accessibility with new high-contrast themes, fonts, and font sizes.
• Upload large inline images into the composer more quickly.
• Click email list item checkboxes more easily with a larger click surface.
• Drop attachments into the composer more easily on the web app.
• Access important email actions using hotkeys (⌘+K / Ctrl+K).
• Schedule messages to send up to three months in advance.
• Get up and running in no time with Proton Mail Bridge thanks to an easier setup wizard, and automatic profile configuration on MacOS.
• Scroll down automatically when entering many recipients in the email composer.
• Get easier access to hide-my-email aliases from the Proton Mail settings.
• Load emails with many images more quickly.
• Use Proton Mail in landscape mode on your iPhone or iPad.
• Add a first and last name to your contacts.
• Enable message content search with a single click if a search result is empty.
• Export your messages with the new Proton Mail export tool.

We also implemented many additional stability and performance improvements.

Completed in Proton Calendar

• Search your calendar with end-to-end encryption.
• Get faster loading speeds when using the web app and exporting calendars.
• Quickly see addresses of events’ participants, copy them, and create or view linked contacts.
• See public holidays in Proton Calendar.
• Accept external calendar invitations that were forwarded to you.
• Enjoy an improved app layout and increased space for calendar events.
• Accept and add calendar invitations even if the organizer field in the ICS file is empty.
• Import events even if the alarm components have an invalid duration.
• Interact with contacts in the side panel while creating an event in your calendar.
• Load events up to three times faster and navigate the mini calendar up to eight times faster thanks to significant performance breakthroughs for iOS.
• Delete calendars from the iOS app.

We also added many minor quality updates and bug fixes.

What’s about to be released before the end of the year

Our work doesn’t stop here. We have many improvements and requests to tackle, and we’re excited to share them with you in more detail when we publish our 2024 Roadmap.

In the meantime, here’s a sample of what we’re about to release:

Proton Mail

• Snooze emails to be notified later.
• Display more than 50 conversations per page.
• Navigate between emails with swipe gestures on iOS.
• Select all emails on a page on iOS.
• Preview attachments right from the message list on iOS.

Proton Calendar

• Send invitations on iOS, which is crucial for many.
• Get a better overview of your events with month view on iOS.

We also plan to release many additional highly requested features in the next couple of weeks.

Didn’t see your request on the list?

If you requested a feature you didn’t see addressed in this article or you have ideas to share with us, we want to hear from you. You can let us know on Reddit, Twitter, UserVoice, or by reporting an issue in your app. You can also contact our customer support team directly via our support form. The more people who request a feature, the higher we will prioritize it.

Keep an eye on our blog or follow our social media channels to stay up to date on new releases. Next month, we’ll publish a more in-depth announcement about our 2024 road map, so stay tuned. Thank you for your support.

Your email has become a prime target for advertisers seeking valuable information about your online activity. Many advertisers try to track you using spy pixels, which we recently discovered are present in over half of all emails. These pixels allow advertisers to track when, where, and from which device you open their emails, compromising your privacy.

Proton Mail protects you from tracking pixels by default, but advertisers have more tools they can use to track you. After spy pixels, tracking links embedded in an email or newsletter are one of the most common ways companies try to spy on you.

These tracking links typically tell an organization which email you read, what you clicked to open the link, and what marketing campaign you engaged with. While not all tracking links are nefarious, they can relay sensitive information that companies can use to personally identify you, profile your behavior, and follow what you do across apps and websites.

Starting today, we’re happy to introduce Tracking Links Protection on our web app. It removes known tracking parameters from links in your emails and is turned on by default. We’re the first email service to offer this level of protection because we believe your inbox belongs to you.

How do tracking links work?

Tracking links can be particularly insidious. They’re often hard to detect: many times, it’s only after you click that you’ll notice an overly long URL in your browser’s address bar, filled with tracking parameters.

Most companies track links to monitor the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, which can have a significant impact on your privacy. By attaching parameters to the URLs in their emails, these companies can track your interactions with their website over time and between apps.

They can then use this information to build a profile on you, refine it to better target you, and share it with third parties. Clicking a tracking link in an email you received can have a significant impact on your privacy because the advertiser already has your email address, which it can use to tie all your online activity together.

The most common tracking parameters are Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters, which are supported natively by Google Analytics. They typically include the campaign name, audience, source (in this case, email), and touchpoint (such as a button in an email). While UTM parameters can be generic, they can also be customized just for you, depending on the sender’s needs. In addition, other ad and tech companies have developed custom tracking parameters that aren’t always documented, making it hard to tell what information they collect.

With all this in mind, we believe tracking links are increasingly being used as a form of surveillance and privacy abuse.

How Proton Mail protects you from email tracking

Proton Mail already blocks tracking pixels used by snooping email senders, so cleaning links from tracking parameters was a logical next step as part of our commitment to protect your privacy.

To accomplish this, we’ve created a blocklist of known tracking parameters using both internal and external, community-supported sources. This ensures that we block not only UTM tracking parameters but also some other custom parameters used by ad companies.

Cleaned links will still redirect you where the sender intended, but they won’t inform the sender that you clicked their link, where you came from, or anything else. We’ve added more details about links and the trackers we block that you can now access by clicking the shield icon.

While privacy-focused browsers like Firefox, Brave, and Safari offer or are developing similar features that block tracking links, it’s unclear whether Chrome or Edge will ever adopt such measures. To ensure you receive consistent privacy protection no matter which browser you use, we built Tracking Links Protection directly into Proton Mail.

It should be noted that email tracking remains a game of cat and mouse. It’s likely that some advertisers will change their tracking parameters to get around blocking technologies or make it so that removing them would break the link. (In such a case, we default to leaving the link intact.)

If you’re particularly concerned about link tracking, be sure to enable our link confirmation feature to make sure you always know where you’re being redirected.

Use Proton Mail for a safer inbox, free from trackers

By choosing Proton Mail, you can have peace of mind knowing that what you do in your inbox and with your emails will stay with you. We want to enable you to keep your personal information private and secure from companies trying to track your every move online.

With our ongoing efforts to protect you from trackers, we’re building a higher standard for email where tracking has no place. Thank you for your support and let us know what you think of Tracking Links Protection on Reddit or Twitter.