Tutanota now comes with dedicated desktop clients

Today we are releasing the first secure desktop clients with built-in encryption for Linux, Windows, Mac OS. This is one of the most important updates since we have first published our secure email service with automatic encryption in March 2014. The new Tutanota desktop clients enable you to use Tutanota directly from your computer without the need of a browser.

Improved security by signing applications

The Tutanota desktop applications for Linux, Windows, and Max OS are signed. You can verify the signature here. The signatures make sure that the desktop clients as well as any updates come directly from us and have not been tampered with.

The client validates the signature before installing any update. This reduces the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks even further as a potential attacker would have to change not only the client on our server, but also the key, which we publish so people can verify that the keys match.

The code for our desktop clients is published on GitHub as open source, just as the code for our webmail cient and our Android and iOS apps. At Tutanota we believe that using free software is the best way to guarantee maximum security.

Read here why our Google-free Android app makes Tutanota one of the best for open source emails.

Secure desktop clients based on Electron

When we decided to build desktop clients for Tutanota, we carefully evaluated whether to build a native client for each OS or use Electron to convert our webmail client into desktop clients for Linux, Windows and Mac OS. We have opted to use Electron for the following reasons:

We are able to support all three major operating systems with minimum effort.

We can quickly adapt the new desktop clients so that they match new features added to the webmail client.

We can allocate development time to particular desktop features, e.g. offline availablity, email import, that will simultaneously be available in all three desktop clients.

Native desktop clients have a slight advantage towards clients built with Electron in regards to RAM, but this advantage does not outweigh the fact that with Electron we can support all three operating systems with miminum development effort. On top of that, we have put special attention to this issue when redesigning our new webmail client in 2017 and 2018 so that the current desktop versions of Tutanota need relatively little RAM.

At Tutanota we are a small team so we have to focus on how to develop the best product with miminum effort, and Electron enables us to achieve just that.

Please note that if you open several instances of the desktop client, only the instance that has been opened first saves data if you choose to save the login password or create a search index. At the moment, the additional instances only use a temporary cache so that such data is not saved when you close the desktop client again.

After releasing the first basic version, we will now focus on adding typical desktop features to the clients.

Email import and synchronization with external mailboxes

The next feature on our development roadmap for the desktop clients is email import and synchronization with external mailboxes. The import feature via the Tutanota desktop clients will enable Tutanota to import emails from external mailboxes and encrypt the data locally on your device before storing it on the Tutanota servers.

This feature is very important to us as it will let you import and encrypt external data in Tutanota without our servers ever being able to see or read your data.

The Tutanota webmail client does not support such an import feature because with the webmail version it is impossible to encrypt imported data before it hits the server.

Offline availability with the desktop clients

The desktop clients also give us the possibility to add offline support to Tutanota. In the future, you will be able to access and view your encrypted mailbox even when you have no access to the Internet via our dedicated desktop clients.

Perfect email alternative to privacy-invading services

To provide the best privacy-focused email service, we are taking every step of your email usage into account. We are never making a trade-off when it comes to security while focusing on your convenience and ease-of-use.

The combination of security with ease-of-use is the reason for Tutanota's continuous growth as well as for the steadily growing number of end-to-end encrypted emails sent by our users.

Secure desktop clients support same features as webmail client

Automatic synchronization for your encrypted mailbox

Your encrypted mailbox is automatically synchronized between the desktop client, the webmail client and the Android and iOS app. No matter where you manage your encrypted emails, your mailbox is updated instantly on all devices.

Short-cuts for ease of use

The new desktop clients support all short-cuts that you are used to from the webmail version. Simply press F1 (Fn+F1) to view all available short-cuts in any opened window.

Two-factor authentication

Tutanota supports 2FA (U2F & TOTP) to further secure your email login. We recommend that you use a hardware token (U2F) as U2F is the most secure form of two-factor authentication.

The beta desktop clients do not support U2F right now. The reason is a known issue with WebAuthN that we plan to fix in the coming months.

Security features that make Tutanota stand out from the crowd

By making sure that all your data is always end-to-end encrypted, only you own your data.

On top of the built-in encryption, Tutanota's secure password reset and innovative search on encrypted data are just two important features that make sure that no third party - not even we - can gain access to your data.

Here are the most important features that make Tutanota's security unrivaled:

end-to-end encrypted mailbox

end-to-end encrypted address book

automatic end-to-end encrypted emails between users

end-to-end encrypted emails to any email address with a shared password

secure password reset that gives us absolutely no access

full-text search of encrypted data executed locally

TLS with support of PFS, DMARC, DKIM, DNSSEC, MTA-STS

open source code for the entire client as well as Android & iOS apps

Tutanota combines security with ease-of-use

Tutanota is the secure email service that combines the advantages of the cloud – availability, automatic back-up, auto-sync, cost-efficiency – with the advantages of hosting your emails on your local server – security and data sovereignty.

Stop using email services that don't respect your privacy! Learn here how you benefit from going Premium for only €1 per month.

Get started now and pick your favorite Tutanota email applications to use an encrypted mailbox easily on all your devices: