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Comment by rossmohax | Hacker News Reader

I'd prefer to see them spending time on polishing their mobile app, which lacks in UX in important areas. For instance offline access to received, but yet unopened emails simply doesn't work. There is a (mis)feature where email bodies are downloaded only on notification, but in my case emails remain unavailable offline and Protonmail support was unhelpful.

But even if email-via-notification worked, it is still pretty much unusable. My usecase is to get to wifi, download emails and get offline, but with Proton mail I'd have to be super careful not to have my app open when enabling connection to wifi, otherwise it instantly downloads all headers and shows no notification, because app is in a foreground, after that there is simply no way to download message bodies other than opening them one by one in all folders. Surprisingly support saw not problem with this UX either.

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This comment comes across as particularly callous. They are saying a part of why they may support the Huawei app store is to continue to provide access to the app to those in developing countries, and your response is to say you'd prefer them spend time on your personal UX pet peeve...

I don't use ProtonMail but this seems like a fairly fundamental issue rather than a personal pet peeve. In my naivety, it also seems like the kind of issue that would cause considerable pain in developing countries who might likely have spotty internet connections, which would lead them straight into said issue.

So whilst it might have been meant callously, from my third party glance it seems quite important.

It is personal in a sense that it is a personal experience and I am unsatisfied customer because of that. Offline access is pretty fundamental feature and it is utterly broken, when I see that they are going to spend company limited resources on a goal which doesn't benefit me as a customer, of course I am questioning whether their interests are aligned with mine.

FWIW, offline access is even more important in developing countries, yet devs living in Switzerland and clearly having no probem with their 4G coverage are failing to realise that.

As a counter, I wouldn't prefer that — yes, there are UX improvements to be made to both the app and the Web UI, but I think multiple distributions channels are welcome.

Ideally, pushing the APK to multiple distribution channels is mostly a one-time job to integrate with their build and deploy pipelines and then it's relatively business-as-usual, so I would imagine it won't take away a lot from development effort in other places once up & running.

As a non-Google Play user, I'm installing via Aptoide (a platform I don't _really_ trust yet) and relying on signatures to validate that the package is valid. Any moves by ProtonMail to offer '1st party' distributions (e.g. F-Droid) is really welcome.

I'd prefer WireGuard support.

But I guess there just is not enough demand for that.

You'd prefer WireGuard support in an email service? What do you mean by that?

For ProtonVPN. Same company. Statement made on the assumption that resources spend on ProtonMail can be spend on ProtonVPN (which I admit is a stretch).

Given how simple WireGuard is to set up I don't understand why they don't support it. Their UI etc, sure. Then just make it alpha or beta or whatever. I'd happily test it. Give feedback, etc.

Meanwhile, I paid for a 2 year sub and barely use it because of this reason. Instead, I run a WireGuard VPN _to_ my home cable connection.

OK for ProtonVPN I am less confused about where your request is coming from. But I still don't see why your ProtonVPN subscription is totally useless to you because of no WG.

Your WG tunnel to your home is nice for accessing home stuff from outside, and for protecting your use of the coffee shop wifi, but it isn't anonymizing your traffic to your home ISP or to websites you use, which is a big reason for using a VPN product.

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