Just got the new beta of ProtonMail - android - and it has an error: "You need to have a WebView Installed to see the message's client"

This does seem to be limited to the Protonmail app (other apps using webview work fine).

Likely an issue with ProtonMail's new beta - but wanted to check in here to see if anyone else is having the same problem - and/or any potential solutions in GOS.

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What's the version number? I'm not seeing a new beta release anywhere and 3.0.16 (the most recent version) released early last month.

"This is a pre-release version of the app, and it doesn’t include all the standard app’s features yet. We don’t recommend you rely on it for important work."

Just wait for the release. This one is for testing.

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It's also worth noting that making the claim that an app's beta version "doesn't work" on GrapheneOS is a bit of a stretch. Especially when not providing any sort of testing conducted on stock OS or another other mobile operating system.

I have beta 3.0.16 and it works perfectly fine. It's been out since July.

I received this from PM:

"The new Proton Mail beta app relies on the default Android WebView, which might not be supported in custom Android versions like GrapheneOS. To potentially resolve this, consider installing the default Android WebView separately. However, our current focus is on enhancing the core functionality of the app, so we may not be able to provide extensive GrapheneOS support at this time."

However - I do have Vanadium WebView installed.

I am running Mull as my default browser, changed so Vanadium is my default - but as expected that didn't make a difference.

    I am running v. 4.7.91.0. so I may be confused.

    lcalamar Proton Mail might be looking for "Android System WebView" specifically:

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.webview

    Vanadium's webview of course has a different app ID, so if it's expecting to see Google's app ID and it's not there, that might be the reason why it's freaking out.

    Try to install the above and see if the app starts working. It is important to know that at no point will you actually be using any other WebView implementation other than Vanadium's (it is impossible to change the WebView in GrapheneOS), so if you install the app above and the app starts working, it proves that it's not actually anything to do with an incompatibility with GrapheneOS, but that they're just checking for the standard WebView and giving an error when they don't find it, which is silly at best.

    As a follow-up to this, we have confirmed in the community that this is the case.

    If you install https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.webview then the app will start working.

    Why this makes no sense is because installing the above does nothing. On GrapheneOS, you can only use the pre-installed Vanadium WebView - you can never use another WebView implementation, no matter what you install.

    The Proton Mail app is just checking for the existence of com.google.android.webview and only allows you to preview e-mails when it detects it as installed, even though it hasn't functionally changed anything in the slightest. It's a hardcoded requirement that makes no sense.

    My hope is that at the very least this will only apply to the beta version of the app and not the full release.

    Marking as solved as this is clearly an intentional decision by Proton Mail which can be trivially bypassed. There's nothing for GrapheneOS to do here.

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      matchboxbananasynergy and not the full release.

      Fingers crossed! Proton Mail has always runs perfectly fine on GrapheneOS with and without Sandboxed Google Play.

      10 days later