How to set up Tutanota mail on Linux
Tutanota is a privacy-based email client and service for Linux and other platforms. It is designed to deliver you an excellent email experience while protecting your email from prying eyes. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install and set it up.
Installing Tutanota on Linux
The Tutanota email client is great, but we cannot go over how to use it yet. The reason? It does not come pre-installed on any Linux operating systems on the market. As a result, you will need to install the program yourself before continuing with this guide manually.
There are three ways to get the Tutanota email client set up on your Linux PC. The first method of installation is the Flatpak universal package format. The second method is a downloadable AppImage, and the third way is through the Arch Linux AUR.
To start installing Tutanota, open up a terminal window, and follow along with the installation instructions down below.
Flatpak
To install Tutanota on Flatpak, you need to first install the Flatpak runtime on your computer. To install the Flatpak runtime, follow our in-depth guide on the subject.
Once you’ve gotten the Flatpak runtime up and running on your computer, use the flatpak remote-add command below, which will enable the Flathub app repository, where Tutanota is available.
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
After adding the Flathub software repository, the Tutanota email client is ready to install on your computer. Using the flatpak install command, set up the app.
sudo flatpak install com.tutanota.Tutanota
AppImage
Tutanota is available as a downloadable AppImage. This method of installation is perfect for those that cannot use Flatpak. To start, open up a terminal window and use the wget download command below to download the app’s latest release.
mkdir -p ~/AppImages
wget https://mail.tutanota.com/desktop/tutanota-desktop-linux.AppImage -O ~/AppImages/tutanota-desktop-linux.AppImage
After downloading the AppImage to your computer, use the chmod command to update its permissions. Permissions need to be changed so that the app will run.
sudo chmod +x ~/AppImages/tutanota-desktop-linux.AppImage
Finally, launch the program on your computer using the commands below. Or, open up the Linux file manager, select the “AppImages” folder, and double-click on the Tutanota AppImage to start it up.
cd ~/AppImages ./tutanota-desktop-linux.AppImage
Arch Linux
The Tutanota email app is available in the Arch Linux AUR for installation. To start the installation, you will need to grab the Trizen AUR helper using the following commands below in a terminal window.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git
cd trizen
makepkg -sri
After installing the Trizen AUR helper, you can install the Tutanota email app. To do that, execute the following trizen -S command in a terminal window.
trizen -S tutanota-desktop
Set up Tutanota mail on Linux
To set up the Tutanota email client on Linux, start by launching the program on the desktop. Once it is launched on your computer, follow the step-by-step instructions down below to get going with it.
Step 1: Look for the “MORE” button in the Tutanota app, and click on it. Selecting this button will reveal a whole bunch of hidden options you don’t see by default. In the “MORE” menu, select the “Sign up” button.
Step 2: Upon clicking on the “Sign up” button, a pop-up window will appear asking for you to choose a subscription tier. Select the free option, and click on the “Select” button to continue.
Step 3: After selecting the “Free” button, another pop-up window will appear on the screen. In this window, Tutanota will let you know that the app can only handle one account per client.
In this pop-up window, select the “I do not own any other Free account” and “I will not use this account for business.”
Step 4: Now that you’ve selected both boxes, you will be asked to create your new Tutanota email account. To start, fill out the “Email address” box with your desired email account.
Step 5: Set up your Tutanota email password, and check the “I have read and agree to the following documents” and “I am at least 16 years old” boxes. Then, click on the “Next” button to continue to the next page.
Step 6: Upon clicking on the “Next” button, Tutanota will prepare your account for use. Then, it will give you a recovery code. Please take this code and save it to a text file (be sure to encrypt it), or print it out on a piece of paper for safekeeping. This code will allow you to reset your account in case of an emergency.
Select “OK” once you’ve copied the code.
After copying your recovery code, you will be able to log in to your Tutanota account. Once logged in, you will be able to send and receive secure emails with no worry of privacy invasions!
