I really wanted to switch to the Proton stack and even tried it for a couple weeks but the search in Proton Mail is so bad I couldn’t use it for even simple things like finding my airline tickets. I had to switch back to Google Workspace.

It doesn’t seem like Proton even really cares about the how bad their mail search is and is more focused on releasing new products.

▲ utopiah an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> search in Proton Mail is so bad I couldn’t use it for even simple things like finding my airline tickets.

Not sure if it's related but

  Proton does not hold your unencrypted email body content

consequently only you do once you are logged in. Thus you can't have server side search on your email content, only on email title. What you can have though is client side full-text search on body content. For that you have to enable it via the search box, details https://proton.me/support/search-message-content

It's not perfect but obviously it's a LOT more than searching only on titles.

▲ general1465 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am using paid version of Proton Mail and search is working in thunderbird connected to their IMAP/SMTP bridge just alright. But web interface may suck, I did not use the web for a long time.

▲ wolvoleo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Outlook online (I have M365 business basic) search sucks just as much. It finds really recent emails and ones from years ago but nothing in between for some reason.

The desktop outlook (the real one, not the 'new' one which is just the web version) is much better of course as it searches locally but it's only on windows. And thunderbird doesn't work great with M365.

But anyway my point is even supposedly premium services screw this up.

▲

andrehacker 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>> The desktop outlook (the real one, not the 'new' one which is just the web version) is much better of course as it searches locally but it's only on windows.

I am very confused by the MicroSoft product branding, but on MacOS there is a "proper" application: "Microsoft Outlook for Mac". As I understand this is called the "New Outlook" which is a native, non-Electron version. As it is not Electron based it is only 2.6GB (/s).

Anyways.. the search capabilities are insanely bad for searches outside of your current mailbox. It might be related to handling of large result sets where it just provides a limited set of random hits as opposed to a set with the most recent hits. When you provide from-to dates (from a hideously complicated "advanced" menu) the results seem a bit better.

edit/addition: on MacOS, Outlook supposedly uses the native "Spotlight" search engine. MacOS spotlight, when used from the Finder, actually does a really good job in finding the E-mail .eml files from the file system and, when clicked, they open up in Outlook.

	▲	lostlogin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I am very confused by the MicroSoft product branding Have a look at Word. The app, the web version, the Teams versions. Try editing in one and then opening in another - they aren’t even compatible. It’s such a nasty swamp.

▲ lostlogin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the search in Proton Mail is so bad

Have you tried Apple Mail? I’d be interested to hear if it’s worse than that.

I use it, the search is very bad.

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cyberpunk 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I use the bridge and a real mail client with proton and the search is fine. You can even hook the bridge into tailscale, so it works across my devices with a real mail client also (e.g phones tablets etc).

The desktop client is rubbish, though, agreed.

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Spooky23 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple Mail the client or the web?

Apple Mail.app is the fastest search available. I use it with o365 specifically for search.

	▲	lostlogin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The app. With MS365 I get terrible search results. And worse, my work email has access to some shared accounts which I can’t access from Apple mail as 2FA will only work for the primary account.

▲ omnimus 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Proton is ok to meh - great marketing though. Try Infomaniak instead.