downvotes notwithstanding, this is an important function for a desktop mail client, and it got taken out early in its life. During the XUL era addons could effe

downvotes notwithstanding, this is an important function for a desktop mail client, and it got taken out early in its life. During the XUL era addons could effect minimizing to tray, but with the switch to web extensions, there is no way to achieve this anymore, and it's been a bane to all desktop users because you can't just run Thunderbird in a background mode that pops up desktop notifications anymore. You either have Thunderbird running, in the foreground, or it's not running, and then obviously it's not picking up your mail.