AliasVault Is The BitWarden Alternative You Didn't Know You Needed

Passwords are one of those things everyone knows they should handle better but rarely do. The bare minimum is not reusing them across sites, and beyond that, you really want a password manager doing the heavy lifting for you.

If you have been looking for options, you have probably come across Proton Pass (partner link) and Bitwarden as two of the more popular cloud-powered choices. For local hosting, something like KeePassXC lets you keep everything on your own machine without any cloud dependency at all.

But I recently came across something a bit different. It is web-based, fully open source, works completely outside any ecosystem, and does a fair bit more than just storing passwords. And you can self-host it as well. So let me tell you about it.

AliasVault: One Vault for Everything

Offered as an open source, end-to-end encrypted password and email alias manager, AliasVault lets you store passwords and create new aliases for use on the web.

The latter works like this. Instead of using your real name and email address everywhere, you generate a unique identity, password, and email alias for each service you sign up to.

If one of those services ever leaks your data or starts spamming you, you know exactly where it came from, and you can just kill that alias.

Operated under XIVISOFT, this is the work of Leendert de Borst, a software developer from the Netherlands who has been building privacy-focused tools since 2013. The project itself is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and the source is available on GitHub.

The cloud version runs on dedicated servers in Germany (Hetzner), within the EU, making it GDPR-compliant. There is also a full self-hosting path via Docker if you would rather keep everything on your own infrastructure.

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AliasVault is yet to reach its first stable release. So use it with caution, as things might break.

Initial configuration

Getting started with AliasVault on the cloud version means heading over to app.aliasvault.net and creating a new vault.

The first thing I noticed is that it does not ask for an email address at signup. You just pick a username, anything you want, and that's all the identifying information it collects.

Before you get to the vault itself, you are asked to agree to the terms and conditions. This is pretty standard for any web service, though the terms here are straightforward and not particularly alarming.

The short version is that you cannot use AliasVault for illegal purposes, you are responsible for keeping your account secure, and the project itself is not liable if you lose your master password and your data becomes inaccessible.

Once past that, you set your master password, and AliasVault shows a strength indicator right there during setup. A strong password is not optional here given the zero-knowledge architecture and the sensitive nature of the contents; lose it and the vault contents are gone for good.

If you are coming from another password manager, the empty vault screen immediately displays an import button. AliasVault can pull in credentials from 1Password, Bitwarden, Chrome, Dashlane, Firefox, KeePass, KeePassXC, Proton Pass, and Strongbox.

Adding new logins

Clicking on the "+ New" button will give you multiple options to add a new entry for Login, Alias, Card, and Note. During my use, I mostly stuck to the Login entry, using it to add new credentials to the vault.

The interface presented here is easy to get used to. You enter the username, add the password, enter the website URL, and click on "Save Item" to get an item added to the vault.

You can even generate passwords, and from the left-hand side menu or at the bottom of the item entry, you can add more content to a vault item, such as email addresses, notes, a two-factor authentication secret, file attachments, or a custom field.

Just click on the plus button to get going.

Keeping things organized is straightforward too. Creating a folder takes about three seconds. Click "+ New Folder", type a name, and hit "Create". Moving an existing login into a folder is done through the item's edit screen, where a Select Folder dropdown lists all your folders.

What is missing, though, is anything resembling bulk management. There is no drag and drop to move items into folders, no batch select to reorganize a bunch of credentials at once, and no multi-select for bulk deletion.

If you are migrating a large existing vault and want to sort everything into folders, you are doing it one item at a time.

The search functionality does make navigating a crowded vault easier, at least. The search bar at the top of the interface queries across your entire vault in real time, pulling up matching items as you type, with icons shown.

Creating an alias

This is where AliasVault separates itself from a regular password manager. Switching to the Alias tab in the "+ New" panel lets you create a fictional identity tied to a service, not just a username and password.

You give it a name and a website URL, hit Create, and AliasVault generates the whole package. A unique email address at the @aliasvault.net domain, a username, a strong password, and a fictitious identity complete with a first name, last name, gender, and birth date.

All of it is ready to use at signup for whatever service you are creating the alias for.

Any emails that land on that alias address show up directly on the item's page inside the vault. I tested this with Facebook, and it worked well enough, getting multiple emails, including the OTP needed to confirm the signup.

The only wrinkle was Facebook asking me to verify the account with a live selfie. ☠️

Another thing to keep in mind is that the built-in email server is currently receive-only.

You cannot reply to or forward emails from your alias addresses on the cloud version. It is a deliberate limitation for now, listed on the roadmap as a future paid feature, so if two-way alias email is something you need, that is worth factoring in.

The browser extension

AliasVault also has browser extensions available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Brave. I tested it on Vivaldi using the Chrome extension, and the experience was clean.

Logging in connects directly to aliasvault.net, and you get a "Log in using Mobile App" option here as you do on the web app if you would rather not type your master password. I didn't test this one, but it should work well.

Once inside, the extension mirrors the web app fairly closely.

You get your full vault list with website icons, folder filters, a search bar, and a "+" button to add new items without leaving the browser. The Emails tab also works here, so you can check alias inbox activity without switching to the web app.

It even shows relevant saved credentials automatically when you land on a website you have a login stored for.

The Settings tab also has a few things worth knowing about. You can switch the vault unlock method between your master password and a PIN code, with the PIN falling back to the master password after three failed attempts.

There is also an auto-lock timeout you can configure, ranging from 15 seconds all the way up to 24 hours, or never if that is your preference. Clipboard behavior is configurable too. Copied sensitive data is cleared automatically after 10 seconds by default, with options to change that to 5, 15, or never.

Closing words

AliasVault is one of those tools that makes you wonder why no one put these two things together sooner. A password manager that also handles email aliasing is something that Proton Pass does, but there are some limits involved.

While it is still in beta and missing a few things like bulk credential management and reply support for aliases, nothing about the current state feels rough or half-baked. If privacy matters to you and you have been running a password manager and a separate alias service side by side, this is worth a serious look.

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Suggested Read 📖: Bitwarden vs. Proton Pass

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Meet Melia: A Privacy-First, Modern Desktop Email Client Made Just for Linux

Every once in a while, a project comes that is very adamantly heavy on its principles and it is always a breath of fresh air in a world where corporate greed forms the basis of all the services we use.

This time it is for a service that is extremely basic and essential, e-mail.

There are a few email clients for desktop Linux already. Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary, to name a few.

I am not saying that they are not good but there is always scope for improvement and new features. And Melia does just that. It brings some additional features, a privacy enthusiast will appreciate.

✋

Non-FOSS Warning! Melia might be awesome but unfortunately it is not an open source software. We covered it here because it is available for Linux.

What Makes Melia Different?

Let's see what makes Melia so special.

Local and offline

All e-mails on the application are stored locally in a SQLite database, which means you don't have to run around with your internet connection, waiting for your data to sync. Even the credentials are stored in the OS keyring (where your OS account passwords are stored), which makes it as safe as it gets from online cyber attacks.

Supports 32+ services

There are 32 pre-programmed presets for most of the common e-mail providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Protonmail, iCould and so on. You need to ensure the allowance of an SMTP connection from the plan that you have on your particular service, however.

Contact management

If you are particular about managing the contacts, Melia builds the address book automatically from sent and received emails. You can edit it and organize it as you want. It also helps with instant autocomplete when composing a mail. You also get stats on each contact.

Rules for a more organized inbox

Get statements from your bank, boring but good to keep for the future? Create a rule and send it automatically to a folder. Your inbox remains clean, and the emails are preserved.

There are many more ways to use the rules and organize the inbox on Melia.

💡

There are also Tidy and Trim features that help you consolidates duplicate IMAP folders and delete old messages in bulk (with your manual approval, of course).

Proper HTML email rendering

HTML-based emails are everywhere, and they need to be displayed the same way they are intended to. Melia uses Shadow DOM isolation, intelligent dark mode transformation, and post-render quality audits to display your favorite newsletters, like FOSS Weekly, beautifully.

Search across accounts

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Melia is free for one email account. If you want to use more than one email account, you can purchase a perpetual license for a one-time fee of $10. Melia developer, Joshua Richard, says that this will help him with the development of the software.

There's a unified full-text search that can find anything across all the accounts that you've added to the client at blazing fast speeds (especially considering all the e-mails are available offline).

Privacy and Security Take Center Stage

There are some really great security features, solving some issues, which I admit didn't even know were issues. The entire focus is on security with verifiable zero telemetry, and privacy instead of analytics, such as:

Tracking pixels neutralized

Some services use tracking pixels to mark e-mails as read back to the sender. The tracking pixels are thus neutralized on Melia, preventing a great deal of invasive telemetry.

Automatic suspicious sender flagging

The senders whose names don't match with the ones assigned to the address are automatically flagged, preventing a lot of scam/spam e-mails that one might receive.

Message authentication

All e-mails received are authenticated against SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

One-click unsubscribe

The worst part of being spammed by a service is getting unrequited e-mails all day annoyingly. Good news is that you an unsubscribe them with just one click, making the whole process much easier.

There are still more minor features, all of which you can check out here.

Transparency You Don’t Usually Get in Email Clients

Apart from the privacy features, Melia prides itself on the transparency it provides to the users. What contributes to that? I'm glad you asked:

Trust center

There's an inbuilt Trust Center, which allows users to block or restrict the activities of the senders, giving you the option to block out e-mail addresses or entire domains, with a full activity log and statistics of all changes made to block or trust any sender.

Connection monitor

The Connection Monitor feature that shows exactly what server the information is coming from or going to in real time, making it as clear as possible that Melia only talks to the servers.

A Simple, Familiar Interface

Melia is built on Electron, which means the interface will translate consistently to any distribution you might want to use. Some will scoff at Electron but it does provide a rather beautiful graphical interface, in my opinion.

They have a full explanation as to why they chose Electron despite the bad rep it gets, and their answer is satisfactory considering it works well, safe, and "claims to keep the RAM usage within 250MB".

The interface itself is slick and simple. There are 2 vertical panels: account list and categories, list of e-mails on the selected category, and the e-mail itself. There's a possible fourth panel if you open the Connection Monitor.

It comes with two inbuilt themes, dark and light, and both are easy on the eyes. Theme can be switched manually or automatically based on your system theme. There are several buttons on top to easily access some of the features, like creating a new e-mail, search, contacts, Connection Monitor, Trust Center and settings. Speaking of which, the settings provide some very simple options, such as:

• Theme, and list density
• Import/export options
• Font settings
• Sync settings (default being every 5 minutes)
• Sound notification settings (you can set a custom one for new mails, opening the app, deletion, etc.)
• Licensing and updates

There's an easy to access sync button right on top of the accounts list on the left panel. There are also two toggle switches on the bottom panel, for sound and theme.

My Experience Setting Up Melia

Initially, I ran into some issues setting up Melia.

Two of my accounts, Google and Protonmail, were being difficult to set up. Then I realized the errors I was making.

First, that Gmail requires 2-step-authentication for it to be set up on Melia, so after doing that, there wasn't an issue.

As for Protonmail, however, using it on an external client isn't a feature available on the free tier, which made it not possible for me to sync up.

So just make sure you read the instructions when setting up accounts; they're usually pretty clear and tell you exactly what to do.

Installing Melia on Linux

Since Melia claims to be an e-mail client for Linux, it offers several choices of packages. So, you have Deb package, AppImage, Snap and Flatpak. You won't find it in the distribution's repository because the software is not open source.

While Debian and Ubuntu users have the deb package option, rest of the distros can choose among AppImage, Flatpak and Snap.

Get Melia

Final Thoughts: Is Melia Worth Trying?

Melia makes several claims and backs all of them up well. It is secure, transparent, easy on the eyes, and very simple to use. The functions all work very stably, primarily including writing and reading e-mails.

It is definitely worth a shot if you want to give it a trial shot with just one account, and then you can decide for yourself if it is worth the $10 to add your other accounts as well.

I would have been much more happier if it was open source. It's one of the classic cases where software seems so much like open source but is not actually.

What do you think of Melia? Let us know in the comments.

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The Single Biggest Reason Why ProtonMail is Killing My Productivity

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:

0:00

/0:06

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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Craving Hyprland But Don't Want to Configure It? Try Dank Linux

During your journey around the world of Linux, you might've come across riced-up builds that look and feel like something out of a sci-fi novel. And if you wondered, why can't I have this on my system?, then you wouldn't be alone.

Many of those builds have something like Niri or Hyprland sitting on top of a Linux distribution that plays nice with such heavy customization. But setting those up is a bit of work, and not everyone might be up for it.

That is where pre-configured distros and scripts like Garuda Linux, Omarchy, ArchRiot, etc. come into the picture. With this article, we will be taking a look at Dank Linux, a desktop shell suite that can transform your system into a slick Hyprland one.

Dank Linux: Hyprland Premium?

Okay, that might be a bit overstated, but using Dank Linux will make you feel that.

Here, you don't need to pay extra for Hyprperks, and instead, you get a tailored Hyprland desktop experience powered by DankMaterialShell (dms), which is a desktop shell built with Quickshell and Go.

It brings panels, a notification center, a lock screen, an app launcher, media controls, and automatic wallpaper-based color theming into one package.

Currently at v1.4.6 "Saffron Bloom", the MIT-licensed project is actively developed, with the installer supporting Arch Linux (incl. derivatives), Fedora (incl. derivatives), Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, and Gentoo (requires systemd), with both x86_64 and ARM64 hardware covered.

Installation was okay

There were a few steps in-between that are not shown here.

After setting up a minimal Arch Linux virtual machine, I ran the cURL script to get Dank Linux installed. The installer asked me to configure a few preferences, like the privilege escalation tool (I went with sudo), the compositor, and the terminal emulator.

I initially picked Niri as the compositor, but after installation, the session would hang on startup due to some bug. I tried a few fixes, but none worked, so I reran the installer and switched to Hyprland with Kitty as the terminal.

After entering my password and letting the installation finish, rebooting left me at a TTY login screen. The system didn't automatically boot into Hyprland, so I had to run the following command to get into the Dank Linux session:

hyprland

📋

Before diving in, here are the keyboard shortcuts you will need to get around:
- Super+Space opens the app launcher.
- Super+Q quits the active window.
- Super+Left Mouse moves windows around.
- Super+Right Mouse resizes them.

The desktop experience was lovely

Once in, you will notice that the installation is quite minimal, with only a limited set of applications shipped out of the box.

To get close to my usual Linux workstation setup, I had to separately install Firefox for browsing, LibreOffice for documents, Nemo as a GUI file manager, and VLC for audio and video playback.

Launching them was easy via the application launcher, with the top bar showing the active window title, a clock, a calendar, weather info, system resource usage, battery status, network connectivity, and quick access to notifications and settings.

Window tiling works cleanly, with windows snapping into a neat layout without any fussing around from my side. That said, the settings menu is where things get interesting in terms of customization.

You can pick a Material Design color theme, let the shell pull one automatically from your wallpaper, or set a custom one. Font changes apply across the shell from the 'Typography & Motion' section, and you can enable a dock if a top bar is not your thing.

The top bar itself is configurable, and you can even swap out the app launcher logo. Similarly, the quick access options are reorderable, so you can arrange them to match how you actually work.

Though this last one was a bit wonky during my testing, refusing to slot the buttons where I wanted them to.

Audio and video playback worked without any issues. I pulled up a YouTube video in Firefox, and it played back smoothly, with no tearing or stuttering worth noting given this was running inside a virtual machine.

What made it nicer was the 'Media' panel sitting in the top bar. It picks up whatever is playing and shows the title, the source, and a progress bar, along with buttons to skip, pause, or resume playback.

For documents, I grabbed a sample ODT file and opened it in LibreOffice Writer. Formatting text, rearranging content, and saving the file all worked as expected. Nothing surprising there.

Plus, it was good to see that the Wayland clipboard and app integration was working well during edit sessions.

The workspace switcher is another area where Dank Linux does well. You get 10 workspaces out of the box, and the switcher gives you a view of what is open across each one.

From the settings menu, you can choose what the workspace switcher indicator shows, whether that's workspace names, running app icons, or both, along with tweaking the overall appearance and enabling reverse scrolling direction.

Small stuff, but having all of that in a GUI menu rather than being buried in a config file can make a real difference in day-to-day use.

Get Started

On a supported distribution, you simply need to run the following cURL script to get Dank Linux:

curl -fsSL https://install.danklinux.com | sh

Though I highly suggest you go through the instructions for dankinstall to prepare your base system properly before making the switch.

Dank Linux

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Proton Drive is Now Faster (And Getting a Linux Client Soon)

If you have been following Proton Drive this year, you know the pace of development has picked up. The developers have been busy rolling out a shared SDK across all their clients, and each update has introduced major improvements.

This week's update is the biggest one yet.

Two things have landed at once. Proton pushed a cryptography overhaul that makes file encryption a lot faster and quietly confirmed that a native Linux client is now in development.

A faster Drive experience

Illustration by the Proton Drive team.

According to Proton's testing, uploads are now up to 3x faster across platforms, and downloads are up to 2x faster.

Everyday tasks like Android photo backup and macOS file sync finish quicker, and the Photos section has been cleaned up too, with faster album loading and smoother timeline scrolling even in large libraries.

All of this is a result of Proton pulling together the work from their Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web teams into one integrated engine. Whereas earlier, every platform was running its own separate implementation, which meant development efforts were scattered across the board.

Now they all run on the same codebase, which means improvements roll out everywhere at the same time rather than platform by platform.

Encryption got a serious upgrade

Proton Drive has used OpenPGP to encrypt file contents since day one. The latest update moves to a newer version of that, and the key change here is that encryption now makes full use of the device's hardware.

The numbers shared by Proton make the difference clearly apparent. On mobile, a 4MB file that used to take 97ms to encrypt now takes 32ms. On desktop-class hardware, the same job goes from 12ms down to 3ms.

In practical terms, this means encrypting an HD video on your phone dropped from about 90 seconds to around 30, and on a desktop the same goes from around 12 seconds to 3.

Existing users are urged to update their clients to take advantage of these improvements.

Linux users, rejoice! 🎉

The most interesting bit of info in the SDK announcement is very easy to miss. Proton has confirmed that they are currently building a native Drive client for Linux, which is being put together from scratch using the SDK.

Earlier this year, the January SDK update had briefly mentioned a Linux client as something on the roadmap. This week's post is a step past that, with them confirming it is now in active development.

For years, many of you have been vocal about the lack of a native Proton Drive app on Linux, and if our comments section is anything to go by, it has been one of the most requested things from the Proton ecosystem.

The SDK is what is making it possible now, and building on it means the Linux client will not be playing catch-up with other platforms when it does arrive. If you haven't already, you can check out Proton Drive via our partner link below while supporting us in the process.

Proton Drive

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Canonical Promotes Steam Snap to Stable on ARM64, With Plans to Rebuild It from Scratch Later

Canonical's Steam snap for ARM64 has been promoted to stable, nearly five months after a call for testing drew feedback from users across a wide range of ARM hardware.

The reason a snap like this exists at all is that Valve's Steam client for Linux is x86-only. To make it run on ARM64, Canonical bundled the x86 Steam binary together with FEX-Emu, a Linux usermode emulator that translates x86 and x86-64 instructions for ARM64 systems at runtime.

Snapcraft lists the stable release of the Steam snap for ARM64 now.

This stable release also introduces FEX's library forwarding feature (thunking) as a user-configurable option. Instead of emulating every graphics API call through FEX, thunking forwards OpenGL and Vulkan calls directly to the host system's native ARM64 libraries, which cuts down on emulation overhead.

Canonical has tested this release across three hardware families, all of which are said to have shown good performance across popular games. These include the NVIDIA DGX Spark and associated GB10 devices, Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops (Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, T14s, and Dell XPS 9345), and the Radxa Orion O6 and O6N.

Switch to stable

If you are already running the snap on candidate or edge and want to move to stable, run:

sudo snap refresh steam --channel=stable

They have also laid out a release cycle for the Steam Snap, with new versions first landing in the edge channel for experimental testing, then moving to candidate after around one to two weeks if no major issues surface. From candidate, they graduate to stable after another one to three weeks.

What's next?

Mitchell Augustin, who announced the stable promotion, wants to eventually rebuild the snap around Valve's native ARM64 Steam client and drop the FEX layer Canonical currently maintains on top of it.

Yeah, that native client is already out there, but quietly. ROCKNIX has already shipped it in their distribution, keeping both ARM64 and x86 launch paths available side by side.

Mitchell said he is keeping a close eye on it but is waiting for Proton 11 to exit beta first before making any moves.

For now, you can use the snap on your ARM64 device, and if you run into any issues or want to contribute to development, then the GitHub tracker for this app is the place to go.

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Suggested Read 📖: Microsoft Just Brought Linux Commands to Windows

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