Proton Issues a Major Update to Mail App on Mobile

Proton today announced a complete overhaul of its Mail app on Android and iPhone built on an all-new Rust codebase.

“Over the past year, we embarked on an ambitious project to rebuild Proton Mail’s iOS and Android apps from the ground up.” Proton’s Anant Vijay writes. “Our completely redesigned apps are fast, modern, and smoother to work with, even when you’re offline. And for the first time, iOS and Android are fully in sync, with the same features and updates arriving side by side.”

The new Proton Mail for mobile features a clean, new user interface with simpler navigation, and dramatic performance improvements. In fact, Proton says that performance is the biggest upgrade in this release: It’s built to respond immediately, and routine actions like scrolling your inbox, archiving threads, or replying on the go, are now twice as fast.

To me, the most significant change is the addition of a complete offline mode that lets you read, write, and organize email without a connection, and then have everything sync automatically when you’re online again. I also like that the Android and iPhone versions of the app are identical, with the same look and feel and functionality.

The new Proton Mail was rewritten in Rust and the Android and iPhone versions of the app share about 80 percent of their code, Proton says, which will help keep the apps updated at the same time with the same features. They’re also native apps on both platforms, which explains the performance boost. And Proton is using this same new architecture for a coming upgrade to its Calendar apps.

The new Proton Mail is rolling out gradually on Android and iPhone now. If you’re using an iPhone, Proton says you can update manually on the App Store to get the new version immediately.