ElectronMail VS Mumble

an application i use a lot is electronmail, the only problem with it is it's only aur package is a binary that bundles it's own electron. if you could make a package that built it from source and used system electron i would greatly appreciate it!

Using Electron-Mail as a Desktop client on multiple devices (Windows, Linux, MacOS) and can say nothing bad about it - it's basically an electron wrapper with added features - I like having my email in a dedicated app. https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail You could also install the website as an app (should work in most browsers).

Electron-Mail offers offline access/ a database. https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail

You van use Electronmail to do this in the meantime: https://github.com/vladimiry/ElectronMail

also you can look into ElectronMail, which is basically what the official desktop app will probably more or less be

It's not self-hosting, but ElectronMail lets you use ProtonMail in an electron app using their frontend code.

Is there a reason that everyone is asking for an official client and not just using ElectronMail? It's had support for Drive for months

The general go-to recommendation for cross-platform email clients is Mozilla Thunderbird (PrivacyGuides, OpenSource.com). I like to be able to have access to my emails offline and currently, I am using ElectronMail, which encrypts the offline datastore with a password that has be input every time the application is launched (GitHub README.md).

I think Sonobus is overkill. I suggest you look at a couple of relatively old-school gamer voice chat tools - Mumble or Teamspeak. Mumble is open-source and the connection is always encrypted, Teamspeak is commercial but the free tier should be fine for you - but you have to make sure to manually turn encryption on yourself. It has been a long time since I used either, so I don't know which is easier. Both of them require you to run their matching server software.

Mumble's latency is unbeatable imo, it's basically their main focus and shows.

The sticking point for me is the lack of persistent messages, something the devs strangely think is a privacy plus. Issue open since 2016: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/2560

If you drop out for a minute you won't have access to anything that was posted in chat, which makes it useless for anything other than voice only comms, that might suit some business purposes but I've always needed to post links or screenshots in chat during meetings.

There's any number of alternative chat applications available, like Element, Mumble, Teamspeak etc.

Mumble?

I think Mumble might fit what you're looking for. It's been a very long time since I've used it, but it seems to still exist: https://www.mumble.info/ - I've used previously for exactly what you're describing, events with lots of crew dispersed around and no budget for radios. I had it installed on an AP running OpenWRT so it was just a case of plugging that in and getting people to install the app and connect to it.

Along with the options already mentioned, if you're not into TeamSpeak, there is an open source alternative called Mumble which operates in the same manner. No internet required, and is supported on multiple platforms.