Bridge CLI (command line interface) guide

Proton Mail Bridge also has a command line interface which can be useful in certain situations. In this article, we list all the commands you can enter in the Bridge command line tool, along with a brief description of what each command does.

First, to launch the CLI, you will need to use one of the following commands depending on your OS:

• Linux: protonmail-bridge -c
• Windows (assuming default install location): “%programfiles%\Proton AG\Proton Mail Bridge\proton-bridge.exe” -c
• Mac OS: /Applications/Proton\ Mail\ Bridge.app/Contents/MacOS/Proton\ Mail\ Bridge –c

When you launch the command line interface, you’ll see this screen initially:

Commands in the CLI

The Bridge CLI comes with many commands, which can help you perform certain actions or change settings. To see the full list of commands, just enter ‘help’ and further details will be printed in the CLI.

As the commands can be updated with versions of the application, you can always use the help command to see the current list of commands and their descriptions.

Cases for using the Bridge CLI

In some cases, it is helpful to use the CLI version to debug issues.

For example, if your Bridge is not launching when using the application icon to launch it with the graphical interface, you can try to use the CLI version and if the issue is related to some graphical libraries, you will be able to use the Bridge CLI.