For example thunderbird vs protonmail app, what is the difference or use case of each?
Threat model: moderate
Reason for asking: confused if I am to use the native apps from protonmail or do i need an extra email client that will give me extra functionality (which i would like to know)
This is purely what you prefer. Can’t go wrong with either these options.
My understanding is, set functional considerations apart, you should always use a third party client, because otherwise you can’t ensure your private keys are stored locally and never sent to the provider.
But, you use proton, well. They always hold your private keys. So there’s no difference
I never saw a reason to use desktop email clients. You’re already using a web browser, yes? Just keep proton’s web app open and pinned in your browser. You’ll get email notifications and keep your setup simple.
I installed Thunderbird and Proton Bridge so I can download a copy of all my emails. I have no other use for Thunderbird.
I asked Proton support about downloading my emails and they suggested Thunderbird and Bridge.
I’ll look into the export tool. Thanks very much.
Edit: Looks like it’s not available for Fedora. Can’t say I’m surprised.
A native email client is always better. The client communicates with the email server via IMAP (an open protocol) and does not share unnecessary information via Javascript. It’s also much much faster than a Web UI, and allows to receive and send email from multiple accounts, possibly on different servers.
I run my own email server and don’t have a webmail at all, all interaction is via IMAP using native clients on desktop (Thunderbird) or mobile (K9).
The export tool does work more reliably in my experience.
My view is that there’s no reason to add more trusted parties (apps) to the mix when you can do things just as well directly through your email service’s web app already. If your email service is trying to fingerprint you via JS then they’re not a true privacy-respecting trusted party and you shouldn’t be using them in the first place. Lastly, web UIs are not typically slower. All the web assets should be getting cached after your first visit, but the web apps could be invalidating that cache when they release new updates.
Budget? You can sign for protonmail plus which is considerably more affordable than the unlimited and manage the 15GB storage saving/archiving locally old emails.
I use Thunderbird and the Proton Mail app. My Proton mail also gets downloaded on Thunderbird. I believe that I set up Proton Mail on Thunderbird before they released a desktop app. Now I mostly Proton’s desktop app. I find it easier.
I disagree, Web “apps” always feel sluggish compared to well designed native clients.
Webmails are also terribly inconvenient if you have more than a couple of mailboxes, even more so with hardened browsers that are essentially always in private mode.
No, that’s not true. A device would have to be extraordinarily weak for a PWA to lose even one-thousandth of its performance.
It is true, because the “apps” are not the same. Gmail is a dog even compared to a “heavy” client like Thunderbird, even more so with high latency (e.g., when using Tor). Running things locally is always better if you can, and email fortunately makes this easy.
I’m definitely not going to weigh in on the subject of Gmail. Take Proton, for instance.
If you use the default Proton Mail app, all Proton features are available there. This is not the case with Thunderbird, but it is certainly not needed all the time.
I personally tested the Proton Mail Bridge a few times and it worked well. However, I saw no reason to actually use the Bridge in conjunction with Thunderbird when the normal Proton mail app works well.
So it’s a question of what you prefer. Apart from Proton, there are many people who don’t want to be dependent on their email provider’s mail client. They want to use Outlook or Thunderbird everywhere without having to rely on the performance of the default mail client. Of course, this is only possible to a limited extent with Proton and only with the Bridge via the desktop. Many people rely on the standardized IMAP/SMTP and don’t want to do without it, wanting to be able to change clients at any time. Today Thunderbird, tomorrow Outlook, and the day after tomorrow something else. 
The likely explanation is that it’s intentionally bad on mobile to force you to use a native app. I believe you’re misunderstanding how modern web apps/PWAs work. They are just as “local” as a native app. Everything is cached indefinitely on the first load and the entire premise of a PWA is to be an “offline-first” app which is virtually the same as a regular native app. The only real difference is the level of permissions that a PWA can access vs a native app which actually leads to native apps to being a lot more invasive (ex. they can freely run binary code with less obstructions as opposed to WASM). This invasiveness is what pushes companies to make their web apps/PWAs work extra shitty on mobile, so that users download their native apps to allow deeper data collection.
Speaking of proton, to me it’s funny how shitty their proton mail desktop native app is. Some chump very lazily just copy/pasted their web code into an Electron container (eg. Chromium-wrapper) with virtually no additional desktop integration. This type of implementation is basically a day or two tops of work for a senior+ dev.
