I use ProtonMail for all official communication related to It's FOSS. Around 2020, I took their Visionary plan and switched from Google Workspace for the @itsfoss.com emails.
The bundled offer of email, VPN, calendar, drive and password manager is a good ecosystem in its own. I am happy with their offering and continuous feature additions and improvements. Well, for the most part,
One thing that I am still missing after all these years is the canned response feature.
The lack of saved replies
If you have ever used Gmail, you probably would have heard of the 'canned response' feature.
The idea is simple and it solves a major problem for people who get emails that often need similar replies. A canned response lets you save template responses. It lets you insert the template response in the email. Here, you can quickly modify it and hit the send button.
Without this feature, I have the usual responses saved in my knowledge base. I have to open that, go to the appropriate response section, copy it and then paste it in Proton Mail, modify the message if needed and then hit the send button.
This could have been fine if it was a once-a-day activity. But if I have to do it multiple times a day, I surely lose time in it. This is especially frustrating because I am aware of the existence of the canned response feature.
It's like being forced to use the mouse when you know the same thing can be quickly done through keyboard shortcuts easily and quickly.
I give you an example. I receive multiple press releases and software coverage requests a day. Often, the reply is similar, with only a little modification needed. Imagine if I could compose the repetitive reply in 2-3 clicks:
I think this feature is more than ten years old and is available for free to all Gmail users. I don't see a reason why ProtonMail cannot offer it.
There are a few more things that can help us ProtonMail users save some time
In Gmail, if you are replying to an email and type Hi its predictive text feature already suggests the responder's name. It does save a few keystrokes.
Now that is Google but I am sure ProtonMail can work on providing a similar feature without intrusing our privacy.
How come? Well, Proton does provide a deep search option where messages are downloaded to the system and then you can search through email content. By default, you can only search through the email subject and sender. This way, the Proton server doesn't see your messages and yet you can do a full search.
Perhaps something on that line to make our lives more convenient? I don't know how technically challenging it could be, that's why it's just a suggestion.
Another convenient feature would be to make their AI integration more useful. ProtonMail has integrated its (private) Lumo AI but I don't find it helpful.
Perhaps it can be utilized to provide predective text? If not that, at least it can be used to compose replies to emails?
For now, it provides a few options: Write for me, proofread, shorten, expand and a couple of options on changing the tone of the message.
The Write for me feature needs full prompts on what to write. If it could read the reply, locally in the browser, and suggest a response, that would be good. Basically, a "compose a reply" option here.
I know, not everyone is a fan of AI and many find it repulsive but if Proton has to become a real private alternative to Google Workspace, it has to offer the cutting edge tools and features. And AI is the hottest buzzword that can raise a shoe company's stocks 800% in a single day.
Come on, good people at Proton. Give us lazy users the boon of template response 😄
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