ProtonMail BETA v1.13 Release Notes

Posted on by Jason Stockman

We are happy to announce the release of ProtonMail v1.13. As usual, please clear your browser cache or log out and log back in if you encounter any problems.

New Features

  • Use native crypto.api functionality in browsers that support it.
  • Drag and drop attachments now allows for faster uploading of attachments and support for multiple attachments.
  • Drag and drop added for importing contacts
  • Added spam and anti-virus filtering.
  • We now support sending of plain-text emails along with HTML emails in our outgoing messages
  • Added the ability to embed images in emails
  • Rebased CSS files to SCSS for future custom theming with community themes
  • It is now possible to receive emails sent to username@protonmail.com
  • New layout for mobile
  • The current folder is now highlighted in the sidebar when viewing a message


Bug Fixes

  • Fixed buggy notification system that alert users when they receive new emails

Improvements

  • Reworked auto-saving of messages to be faster and more stable
  • Improved parsing for ICS calendar formats
  • Removed Google Analytics and replaced it with a local Piwik installation
  • Updated inbox user interface
  • Upgraded editor for composing messages

Known Issues

  • Temporarily removed view Original Messages features, this will return in v1.14 after some optimizations.
  • Account creation on mobile devices is unreliable.
  • Encrypted attachments not yet enabled.

Security Fixes

A big thanks to Kacper Rybczyński and Mazin Ahmed for their help in security testing version 113! Several security issues were identified and fixed on the dev branch prior to release.

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About the Author

Jason Stockman

Jason is a co-founder of ProtonMail. He works on building ProtonMail's user interface and websites. Jason has over 10 years experience building websites and applications.

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101 comments on “ProtonMail BETA v1.13 Release Notes”

  • Theresa,

    Thank you for great work! Loving Protonmail! I appreciate all your hard work. Glad there are detailed people in the world like you–who also value privacy. Best wishes to all of you as you develop this project further.

    Reply
  • Ah well,

    What about the option for creating folders? Where is the button for that? I do not want to just have folders predefined by you and it is a simple thing that virtually all web based emails allow for.

    Reply
  • hamsun,

    Thanks, good work, this is moving steady! Just one question: could you please elaborate a bit more on the new crypto.api functionality? Always interested in knowing more about any privacy related change or improvement in Protonmail! Thanks again.

    Reply
  • Mario,

    I apologize in advance for my incompetence! I received a notice of upgrades but I can not understand in what way I can download.
    Thks and rgds

    Reply
  • Scott,

    Very helpful upgrade, esp. adding the “.com” alias address.

    The image insert option is a plus, but would it be possible to allow inserting images *from one’s computer* as well? All the images/photos I would include inline are on my computer, not online anywhere. :-(

    And you fixed the FF/Palemoon bug where the compose screen would contract when resuming a draft. Thank you!

    Still anxiously awaiting a system Archive folder with a corresponding button (in the message list view and the message view) for single-click archiving! :-) (I know little about such things, but I would assume that creating a single storage/archive folder should be relatively easy to implement and could be done soon. This could be done in anticipation of the full-fledged, customizable folder system you wish to introduce eventually.)

    Thanks again. Keep up the excellent work!

    Reply
  • Nicola Jelmorini,

    Hi,

    this is the best version of Protonmail ever!

    I have a couple of suggestions/questions:
    1) it would be possible to embed images in the email text from the local disk, and not only with an URL?
    2) in the text editor for the email there is no possibility to change the size, the color, or the background color of the text. It will be possible in the next versions to have these features? Sometimes it’s useful to emphasize some parts of the text.

    Thank you for your good job :-)

    Reply
  • s,

    firefox would not allow me to connect to the link to blog.protonmail…in my email. Message said it was an unknown and refused. No over-ride permitted. Refused to go there. Today I was able to go to the blog from the bottom of the page, but could not do that yesterday either. When I tried to report that issue to you, I discovered that the bug issue form, would not allow me to see the entire form, and would not scroll so that I could complete and send the form in. Thus, you have a bug in bug reporting issue. Just thought you might want to know.

    Reply
      • gerard,

        No worries, but I have to admit that its pretty annoying to work without having folders… I now have everything just on one pile making my inbox a huge mess.

        Another point of attention is that the font size when you type an email has been changed and there is no way of undoing this. As I could not upload a screenshot here I have placed it on your Facebook page…

        P.s. any idea when you will set up a new crowd funding action?

        Reply
        • Admin,

          Yes, folders is high on our list and we hope to introduce them soon. The ability to change the font size could come in a future version of our editor. As for another crowdfunding campaign, this is something we will consider for this summer.

          Reply
  • Creazy,

    Hi everybody,

    We thank you a lot for all the very good job you made for us !

    Long life to ProtonMail !

    ps : just a question, how is it possible to change our email for a “.com”, do we have to ask you a demand for a new account ? Thanks.

    Reply
  • Scott Squibbles,

    Thanks for all the work that has been done in the latest release of version 1.13! I must say that when I go to compose a new message, it works and looks much better than it did in version 1.12. I am excited to see that someone changed their mind and decided to change the way the signature looks in the compose box too. Keep up the hard work!! :^)

    Reply
  • ALINEFX,

    There is a bug in V 1.3. Encrypted email sent to outside users result in them seeing an email which cannot be scrolled through if it is longer than one page.

    Reply
  • Sam Stone,

    Looking good. Protonmail is certainly moving towards be my primary email client with every release.

    A few questions:
    1) ETA on folders and message filters and /or tags? I prefer the flexibility of having both.
    2) ETA on Android app?
    3) Is Thunderbird integration in the plan anywhere?

    Sam

    Reply
    • Admin,

      These are all in the works for this spring with the exception of Thunderbird which is lower priority at this time but will eventually happen.

      Reply
  • Hoops,

    A sincere thank you for another fine release! Just wondering – what are your thoughts on the UK’s mutterings on banning encryption?

    Reply
  • M,

    Adding a “tags” or “labels” function is all I need to permanently migrate from Gmail to protonmail. And I don’t think that I speak only for myself on this one.

    Thanks for all the hard work, folks!

    Reply
  • Michael Hanna,

    1.13 looks great. Here is some feedback about uploading attachments.

    When the attachment is finished uploading please indicate a successful completed upload, like changing the progress bar to green and a checkmark or something.

    Reply
  • Scott,

    Recently I sent an encrypted email to a friend with an expiration of 7 days. He does not have a Protonmail account. Your site’s feature discussion indicates that “You can set an optional expiration time on ProtonMail’s encrypted emails, so they will be automatically deleted from the recipient’s inbox once they have expired. This works for both emails sent to other ProtonMail users, and encrypted emails sent to outside email addresses. So, I assumed that after 7 days the link sent to my friend would no longer work, i.e. he would be denied access to the message. But I thought that I would still have the ‘original’ message in my Sent folder. Well, the message did successfully expire from my friend’s perspective, but it was also deleted from my Sent folder! Since it was a private/encrypted message I did not BCC it anywhere. I also did not copy it to my computer. It was located only at Protonmail but now is gone!

    This isn’t a huge deal for me, since it was nothing vitally important. But it demonstrates that if I could misunderstand the description of how such messages work, and the fact that they are removed from the sender’s Sent box when they expire, it’s possible other Protonmail users will, too.

    Perhaps you should re-write your description of this feature a bit to make it more clear what happens — the fact that both recipient and sender lose the message.

    For that matter, perhaps you could modify things so that the link to the message can expire without the message also disappearing from one’s own account, if one chooses.

    Just a suggestion. :-)

    Thanks!

    Reply
      • Freek,

        Ah, actually I like that behavior, even if one would be forced to decrypt (as can be done lawfully in some countries) there still would be no trace of your communication!

        Reply
        • Scott,

          I like the behavior, too — as an option. I don’t even mind if it’s the default option, since it’s the safest. I just think it would be good to have the additional option of allowing a Protonmail user to retain a copy of the email indefinitely and have it expire only for the recipient.

          Reply
  • Thomas,

    Once again: thanks a lot for your great work! Just one brief question: You say “We now support sending of plain-text emails along with HTML emails in our outgoing messages”, but I don’t find anything in my ProtonMailbox, not in the composing window, not in Settings either. Am I missing something?
    Thanks again!

    Reply
  • Andrew,

    I’ve been waiting ages to get an account with proton mail.ch
    (I know lots of others are to)
    Any idea when this will happen Pls
    What alternative email would you recommend until I have an account with you
    Many thanks

    Reply
  • Anonymous,

    Dear proton-mail team,

    could you post information about the server capacity/userbase?
    E.g. current number of registered, waiting, confirmed users.
    How many invites you sent the last periods (year, quarter, month), etc.

    Thank you!
    Sven

    Reply
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  • Doug Huffman,

    “We now support sending of plain-text emails along with HTML emails in our outgoing messages.” How please? I see no option in the compose box to sent in plain text.

    Reply
    • Admin,

      Sorry about the confusion, this is something that happens in the background and is not something the user sees. Basically, it means when we send your emails, we now send a plaintext version along with the html so it will be displayed properly on the other end even if they don’t support html.

      Reply
      • Rob,

        Thank you for a great email service!

        I have a follow-up question on plain text composing.

        While I am aware that messages are currently send in both plain and html, will there be an option to compose and send emails as plain text only (similar to the option in Thunderbird to turn on and off the “compose message in HTML-format”), or to send emails in such a way that the email-body will always be displayed as plain text (even if the receiving program can support both html and plain)?

        I believe many people prefer to write emails in plain text, so a greater control on html/plain text for the user would be appreciated.

        Thanks!

        Reply
        • Admin,

          Thank you for the comment and the support! We’re still working on improving our editor, these features may be included in those improvements, please stay tuned for updates.

          Reply
          • Tute,

            I also look forward for the ability to write and send plain-text emails.
            Thank you very much for your great work!

  • David Morton,

    Using new update:
    Sent test messages to my Hushmail account, encrypted with password and hint.
    Hushmail received message, clicking on link took me to my ProtonMail account web page, where it demanded ProtonMail initial login and then message password of message sent.
    Same thing using my proxy email account with fastmail.

    Most recipients would not be aware of my ProtonMail login (except probably the N*A)

    This did not happen with v 1.12.
    Any suggestions?
    THX

    Reply
    • Admin,

      This happened because you are signed into your ProtonMail account. If you are not signed into your ProtonMail, then it will work normally. We will put in a fix for this in version 1.14.

      Reply
      • David Morton,

        Hi, thanks for reply.
        Actually I did think that might be the case!
        To find out, I tried the test logged in to my proton mail account, logged out of my account, closing browser (Sleipnir) Opened new browser (Opera) made it default, tried again closing browser before opening message in Apple mail.
        All attempts yielded the same result. Clicking on the link in your email opened my default browser, took me to your login screen and demanded initial login.

        As long as you aware of some variation of this problem and are working to resolve it ,no sweat!
        Program is still a fine piece of work.

        Thank you.

        Reply
  • Big Fan,

    Dear Support,

    Do you have an ETA on Calendar? It’s the only thing preventing our migration.
    Looking forward to supporting ProtonMail!

    Thanks,

    Reply
  • anon,

    I have a suggestion:

    Could you implement phone numbers to be stored in protonmail’s contacts? When I import contacts from gmail, the only information that gets imported is the name and email address.

    I agree with the above comment about having a calendar.

    thanks for all the hard work!

    Reply
  • Daniel,

    Hi!
    Please tell me why is so important this ”.com” (commercial.. :) ) for our e-mail address?? It is not enough ”.ch” ? Maybe is a stupid question… but I really do not understand.. Thanks!

    Reply
  • richard,

    Hi
    Very nice one ! well done.
    A few questions..
    Can we use the .com address as the default reply address ?
    Any chance to use PM via thunderbird in the future ?

    regards

    Richard

    Reply
  • SteveO,

    Would it be possible to have outgoing mails use the .com domain instead of .ch domain? Maybe a switch to do this?

    Thanks for all your great work!

    Reply
      • tridy,

        for me this would be a highly desirable feature. it could be a part of the premium subscriptions. I was wondering how much storage will be available with premium and what price are we talking about?

        Reply
  • Matt,

    Hi,

    Repro case:
    1. Click on ‘Compose’
    2. Click on ‘Inbox’
    3. Browser (Firefox) asks in a popup whether to leave the page or stay
    4. Click on ‘Leave’
    5. An empty draft will be created

    First of all, the popup seems to be browser specific, should be handled by the protonmail client software instead (i.e. warning window).
    Secondly, it would be good to check whether anything was typed/configured in the ‘Compose’ page and only then persist it in ‘Drafts’.
    Just clicking between ‘Compose’ and ‘Inbox’ (or anywhere else) creates ‘dummy’ drafts.
    Or maybe a protonmail specific popup asking whether to save/discard the empty message.

    Keep up the great work!

    Reply
    • Jason Stockman,

      As we are still in beta, we are working hard to develop new features. Using your own domain for email is one that is on our list of features to develop in the future.

      Reply
  • freek,

    A small feature request:
    crtl-enter to send message would be very nice, this works in all mail clients I know and also in gmail.

    Also, arrival dates or estimates on the apps but also on the custom domain feature (and whether that requires extra payment) would be very much appreciated.

    Can’t wait to switch to protonmail as my primary mail provider, the custom domain is holding me back the most. My current provider does not even offer TLS (for smtp)!

    Reply
  • Gabriel,

    Nice job!

    One suggestion/request:
    Would it be possible for a notification framework to exist, if not containing content maybe just saying that an email was received?
    I’m not sure how the mailbox encryption works so I don’t know if this is possible, but if not, maybe just a native safari (etc) notification?

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Jason Stockman,

      This is something we might look into in the future. We are developing iOS and Android apps, so you may be able to receive notifications from those apps. We’re looking into other solutions too for users to ProtonMail, so please stay tuned.

      Reply
  • Róbert,

    Hi guys! Nice version, I really like the direction of where this is heading! Just wanna ask about contact list:
    – are you working on adding an ability to add also phone numbers to our contacts? I would love that! and also to sync them with my iPhone – that would be just awesome! Still, I understand it might be a lot of work to do that :)
    – also really looking forward for those custom folders, I guess it will just make us use protonmail even more ,-)

    Have a great day

    Reply
    • Admin,

      Hello Robert,

      Thank you for the support and the comment. We are looking to add additional lines for information in the contacts tab. The iOS and Android app is also in development for the next few months. Additional folders is on our list of features to add too :)

      Reply
    • Admin,

      Thank you for the support! We’re developing iOS and Android apps for ProtonMail and we are planning to release them in the coming months.

      Reply
  • Agent Smith,

    I like the idea of an ProtonMail App as passwords are cumbersome at times, especially when just requiring a quick look at my mailbox.

    Don’t suppose you chaps have a rough timeline for possible beta release?

    Reply
  • John Doe,

    I love what you have done so far. much better than unseen.is too

    IU is human friendly. :-)

    Please keep this system Simple as it is now

    Adding all the extras that people are now requesting will only ruin your great work and will open doors for unwanted snooping prying eyes

    Tnx again

    Ex Intel SIGINT employee

    happy I left that unethical work

    Reply
  • User,

    Hi, I’m trying to connect to my mailbox using my mailbox password and I receive the “success” message but still can’t acess the mailbox.

    What’s going on?

    Reply