captcha manual solver too tedious, maybe use selenium or pyqt? Also give option to solve manually if fails

[AdityaGarg8]

The current implementation to manually solve captcha is too tedious. Maybe we can use selenium or pyqt to automate it?

Also, instead of failing if captcha auto solve fails, maybe ask user to solve manually?

I wonder why hydroxide doesn't need captcha.

[opulentfox-29]

1. Why do you think manual CAPTCHA solving is "too tedious" when it should be a one-time process where you do proton.save_session('session.pickle') and then use proton.load_session('session.pickle') without encountering the CAPTCHA again?
2. Why do you even use manual CAPTCHA solving instead of automatic? I only have 1 out of 10+ cases where the automatic CAPTCHA solving fails, then I just restart and everything works fine.

I added manual CAPTCHA solving just in case they change the CAPTCHA algorithm itself. The CAPTCHA consists of two parts:

1. Picture solving - This is where the automatic solving has a chance of failing.
2. PoW (Proof-of-Work) solving - If they don't change the algorithm, then solving it has a 100% chance of succeeding.

Maybe we can use selenium or pyqt to automate it?

No, selenium is too heavy a dependency for a library, if this was an end user application, selenium could be used, but it is a library that many people install inside their applications, which are then used by users, so I think it is wrong to install heavy dependencies on a library. This library is also installed on servers/Docker containers, where there is no GUI.

We can add pyqt as a third option for CAPTCHA solving, giving the user the option to solve the image, but leave the PoW solution in the library, and if they change the PoW algorithm, then manual CAPTCHA solving can be used.

Also, instead of failing if captcha auto solve fails, maybe ask user to solve manually?

We can do this as an additional option, but I think after the user sees the error, they will simply restart the login again and they will be presented with another CAPTCHA, which will be solved automatically.

I wonder why hydroxide doesn't need captcha.

Recently, ProtonMail started throwing a CAPTCHA on all login requests sent with python requests. To avoid this, you can use the curl_cffi library:

pip install curl-cffi

from curl_cffi import Session

from protonmail import ProtonMail
from protonmail.constants import DEFAULT_HEADERS
from protonmail.models import LoginType

proton = ProtonMail()
proton.session = Session(impersonate='chrome136')
proton.session.headers.update(DEFAULT_HEADERS)

proton.login(username, password, login_type=LoginType.DEV)
proton.save_session('session.pickle')

And if dev login type stops working, then you can use web login type by first updating the version of web-account in headers:

proton = ProtonMail()
proton.session = Session(impersonate='chrome136')
DEFAULT_HEADERS['x-pm-appversion'] = 'web-account@5.0.257.4'  # Copied from browser, updated frequently
proton.session.headers.update(DEFAULT_HEADERS)

proton.login(username, password)  # The default login type is web login.
proton.save_session('session.pickle')

I think in the future I will replace requests with curl_cffi

[AdityaGarg8]

curl_cffi works nicely. I think we can replace requests with this.

[AdityaGarg8]

Actually the save session is not working properly, not sure why.

[opulentfox-29]

Actually the save session is not working properly, not sure why.

This is a serious issue, we need to find out why. Please send an example of the code you are using, the error message or information about what is going wrong.

[AdityaGarg8]

I did this change, session saves, but cannot send email.

AdityaGarg8@7ac6c51

Ignore the extra "from". It's not there in my local copy

[AdityaGarg8]

For some reason, it has started working for me, but now I am getting captcha

[AdityaGarg8]

After some time, captcha is no longer there. Interesting.

[ChromiumOS-Guy]

proton be like that with captcha.

I wonder would it be possible to somehow import a session from some web container (or really just give the ability to just throw the session token at the library), that will solve the captcha problem by virtue of not having to deal with it.

[AdityaGarg8]

Captcha autosolver is already there.

[AdityaGarg8]

I managed to get it working with pyqt as well.