Hello everyone! I’m new to being a user in this forum, but I’ve been following it since I started my privacy journey in early 2024. I still have woefully much to learn, so while I’ve tried to do my research, I’m very sorry in advance if I’ve missed something obvious!
My question: What services or solutions do you recommend for collaborative writing and document sharing (with others without accounts) to others without accounts for mobile usage specifically?
Related discussions:
I haven’t been able to find a discussion specific to the mobile aspect (though some were related), so I hope this thread can provide insight to other people with a similar curiosity to mine.
Noted recommendations:
Of PG’s recommendations, Proton Docs (via Proton Drive) seems to be the most straight-forward solution, but I was wondering if I’d missed any obvious alternatives outside of the Proton ecosystem.
I know that PG also recommends Cryptpad for online collaboration, but when I tried it out, I unfortunately found it borderline unusable on mobile (Android, Brave/Vanadium). Not meant derogatorily, just that I wasn’t able to make it work for daily use, either due to various small bugs or its text selection functionality in particular, which only allows marking a single word or very small area, with no option to edit the selection. PG’s Cryptpad review is wonderful, but I wasn’t able to identify comments within it on the mobile experience.
Other services mentioned in threads include Skiff Pages and Collabora Online, but between Skiff’s history and Collabora’s apparent focus on B2B, neither appears a great fit. Besides, neither are recommended by PG, even if I believe Collabora is based on LibreOffice, which is.
Context / use case:
If the question is broader than I realize, my own use case is that a group I’m in typically shares written snippets in Google Docs, valuing its ease of use for sharing with each other and editing together (and in truth, likely also that it’s free). They are not overly privacy conscious, but if I could point them to a frictionless equivalent, they might be inclined to switch over.
My own threat model here mainly concerns mass (corporate) surveillance, hence the wish to reduce contact with Google.
Thank you so much for reading this far! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I don’t see a lot of questions asking for real productivity work and mobile specific at that. But my first thought was Proton Docs too. Have you tried it yet at all? Seems like it should work just fine.
Besides that, I can’t think of any at the moment.
Though this brings me to a new idea apps like Notesnook can introduce: collaborative shared notes with specific people on specific notes with all the benefits of privacy and security that goes along with it as a product. I wonder if anyone has thought about this.
I have the collabora integration installed to my nextcloud instance which has worked well in my experience.
If you don’t have your own homelab setup you can also try out an etherpad instance, which I believe would fit your threat model of corporate mass surveillance even though it’s not E2EE as long as the host is benign.
The situation you’re describing is exactly in Proton’s target demographic: people who are accustomed to Google’s productivity products and are willing to move to a more privacy-friendly tool if it’s not too hard to learn to use. Proton makes a lot of design choices aiming at being a relatively frictionless transition for people used to Google Docs.
I don’t like editing stuff on my phone so don’t do it much, so there might be nuances I’m missing, but Proton Drive has a dedicated mobile app that in my experience is perfectly functional and intuitively laid out.
Proton Docs has limitations. The biggest I’ve run into from a pure productivity perspective (not getting into differential privacy questions, since it sounds like for your threat model, Proton and Cryptpad are pretty equivalent privacy-wise), are
it has no clickable or searchable table of contents (based on section headers), like Google Docs has and which Cryptpad also has.
there’s a limitation on how many encrypted share links you can create on a free account. I think you can share an unlimited number of documents (well; limited only by your file storage allotment) internally within Proton, i.e. by sharing to someone’s Proton Mail account. But if your workflow on Google Docs involves creating a publicly shareable link and sending it to someone via an external method, this might be a pain. The workaround I’ve found is to share to everyone’s email, then copy the link from the browser bar and send that to the relevant parties. They will still need to be logged into their Proton account to access the document via the link. (If you want me to explain this part in more detail I am happy to.) The other solution would of course be to pay for Proton Mail Plus.
Unless one of those things is a dealbreaker, for the use case you’re describing I would predict you’ll have a much smoother transition on Proton Docs than on the other options mentioned in your post or on this thread.
You’re right that Cryptpad is a huge pain to use on mobile. It’s also glitchy, sometimes in a way that destroys data and/or can’t be easily undone, especially when a document is long or has a lot of people logged on making edits. I’ve also had issues with documents not loading for some people they’re shared with, especially on mobile. After several years experience of onboarding varyingly technically skilled folks onto Cryptpad I can say with firm enthusiasm that if Proton Docs had existed when I began the project in question, I would have chosen it instead. That said: because Proton Docs did not exist when I began the project in question I have not stress-tested Proton the way I have stress-tested Cryptpad. I can say affirmatively that with large numbers of people making edits on a several-page document on Cryptpad, Cryptpad can glitch in disastrous ways. I cannot say with equal confidence that that does not happen on Proton. Only that it has not happened to me so far. I’ve collaboratively edited very long documents on Proton, but haven’t had more than three people or so making edits simultaneously.
IDK anything about Skiff.
I haven’t tried Collabora’s brand new desktop product, but I have messed around with a lot of versions of Collabora and Nextcloud+Libre Office, and (as a pretty un-technical person at the time) found them to be surprisingly technically difficult to get working, compared to the pretty seamless and intuitive user interface of Proton Docs. Also Proton is E2EE and Collabora is not, so unless Collabora offers you a particular function that Proton fails to, even though your threat model seems relatively gentle, Proton still seems like the obvious choice.
Notesnook’s free tier is capped at 3 people collaborating per note. Plus their iOS app has a weirdly persistent glitch that often makes the cursor sometimes appear in the wrong place, though I guess I don’t know for sure that that’s not a personal problem of mine. The 3 people limitation seems likely to be a dealbreaker for your use case if your writing group has more than 3 members.
I have no experience with Etherpad so make no comment on it. It might well be exactly as good as Proton Docs and I wouldn’t know.
@JG Yes, I’ve tried it, and it seems to fit my personal use well so far! In terms of appealing to the group I’m in, I think Proton’s requirement of an account may be a point of friction, however minor; apart from that, I agree that Proton Docs seems the way to go.
@Anvil No homelab for me yet, but your Etherpad recommendation is really interesting. Thank you - as well for the direct Disroot instance link! I agree that they’re a good bet for instance hosts, and I’ll go check it out there.
@prayidae Thank you so much for the digestible and detailed run-through, and for relating it so closely to my context. I really appreciate it! Especially your Cryptpad experiences has me convinced that Proton Docs seems the best bet for both myself and my group at the moment, even if I still have much respect for Cryptpad’s efforts. You’re also very welcome to elaborate on the differential privacy between the two, if you have the time and inclination. Even if my current threat model is quite gentle, I’d love to be better informed!
