How To Set Up An Automatic Email Forwarding On Proton Mail

If you struggle with setting up your ProtonMail account to forward your received email to another address, you have come to the right place.

Based on what the Proton Mail Twitter account answered when somebody asked why ProtonMail does not allow email auto-forwarding. They said that it is for security purposes, however, they said that you can still do it via ProtonMail Bridge with a local mail client.

Without further ado, let’s give it a shot.

First things first, let us prepare what tools we need.

1. ProtonMail Bridge

You can download this by logging into your ProtonMail on your browser, then go to Settings and click on IMAP/SMTP, download the software based on your computer operating system. Because I am using Windows 10, I will download ProtonMail Bridge for Windows. 

2. Mozilla Thunderbird

Download through the official link here. This software will manage how you forward every message you receive automatically. 

With all the essentials downloaded, please install them on your computer, if you do not know how to install them, you can watch our tutorial here.

After installing the ProtonMail bridge and Mozilla Thunderbird, now follow these steps to set up Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Open your Mozilla Thunderbird, you will likely see three icon shortcuts on your desktop after installing it. Choose the one that says “Mozilla Thunderbird”

2. On the top right corner, you will see Account Settings. If you cannot find this menu, right-click on the space inside the Folders area and look down for the Settings option. 

3. When you are inside the Account Settings, fill out the 

information needed to log into your ProtonMail using Mozilla 

Thunderbird. There are three boxes you want to fill in:

1. Account Name

2. Your Name

3. Email Address

4. Now, minimize your Mozilla Thunderbird and open your ProtonMail bridge, log into your ProtonMail account and you should see the information of your IMAP and SMTP.
5. Go back to your Mozilla Thunderbird and inside the Account Settings, click on the Server Settings, and fill in the information needed using the information you get from your ProtonMail bridge, for this Server Settings use the information shown on the IMAP section.
6. Now, in Mozilla Thunderbird, click the very last menu which is Outgoing Server (SMTP), and click the “Add” button that is located beside the empty box. Use the information from your ProtonMail bridge in the SMTP section. 
7. The set-up is DONE!
8. However, it is not connected yet, you still have to insert the password by closing the Account Settings tab, and hitting the “x” button on the Account Settings tab.
9. Now, you should be on the homepage, under the homepage tab there is a menu that reads “Get Messages”, and there will be two options as the dropdown menus. Click either.
10. You will be asked for a password, copy the password from your ProtonMail bridge either from the IMAP or SMTP section.
11. Voila! The messages start coming into your inbox inside Mozilla Thunderbird.

Now, to set up the forwarding automation, follow these steps:

1. On your homepage, click on your account name, the second main menu on the Folders box. 

2. You will see “Manage message filters”, and click on it. 

3. There will be a new window popping up, enable “Match All Messages”

4. Click on the “Edit” button and a new window shows up.

5. In the very bottom box, you will see a “+” button, click on it and insert the email address to which you want your message to be forwarded. 

6. Choose the option “Forward Message to” on the dropdown menu on the right side of the email address you just added.

7. Click OK and the set-up is DONE!

You can now test if the message you received in your ProtonMail account is sent to the email address you just added. 

For the heads up though, the automation will only work if the computer where you installed the Mozilla Thunderbird is connected to the internet.