29 ms·

Thunderbird 102

811 points by moojacob 4y ago

yubiox 4y ago
I don't really care about icons and I don't use contacts. What would be nice though is to be able to customize things like putting those stars on all unread email instead of just "new" email, whatever that is. The read/unread tiny dot is hard to see especially for the current highlighted message. I've used tbird forever and it is otherwise awesome. Thanks.
sudobash1 4y ago
> One of the core philosophies behind the development of Thunderbird 102 was doing more with less. > ...you’ll find out-of-box support for the popular, decentralized chat protocol Matrix in Thunderbird 102 Personally, I see these two statements as being directly contradictory. I'm glad to see Thunderbird's maintenance continuing well, but I want it to be a focused app. On the other hand, I have been glad to have out of the box Lightning integration, so perhaps I will come to enjoy the Matrix addition as well.
- Closi 4y ago
  Ah yes, Matrix support added before Exchange support!
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Honest question: is exchange support still relevant nowadays? A lot of companies seem to have switched to Office365 which is not the same thing and most of the one I have worked with block third-party clients in their security policies.
    - nvr219 4y ago
      I've always used Exchange support to include Exchange Online support and yes that's very important. I would switch to Thunderbird the day they announced full Exchange support.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      Office365 is pretty much just Exchange underneath. And tons of larger orgs still use on-prem Exchange. Microsoft just announced the next version of on-premise Exchange for launch in 2024. As cloud costs ratchet up and the weaknesses become more apparent, I suspect you'll see orgs start migrating back away from the cloud.
    - gpanders 4y ago
      Unfortunately yes. Some organizations (like mine) use Office365 and disable IMAP/SMTP, so the only way to interface to the mail server is via Exchange :(
    - Arn_Thor 4y ago
      You'd be surprised. In certain sectors, companies prefer to keep as little as possible of their sensitive information in the cloud, emails included. Running their own exchange server is a common way to do that.
  - addicted 4y ago
    Exchange support is probably ridiculously hard because I can’t imagine there’s all that many open source implementations for it. Matrix support is probably a ton easier. Besides, matrix is designed to be implemented by multiple parties. Exchange isn’t. In fact, exchange is almost certainly the opposite.
    - digisign 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Evolution Believe there are libraries available as well.
      - jeroenhd 4y ago
        The exchange support for Evolution never worked well for me. There was always something that didn't sync, didn't get detected, or wasn't supported. I don't blame the devs, Exchange is a proprietary standard so you can't expect it to work well. It's like the reverse-engineered drivers for hardware the manufacturer doesn't bother to write Linux support or sufficient documentation for: it doesn't work great, but that's despite the devs' best effort, not because of it.
        peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > The exchange support for Evolution never worked well for me. it has been working beautifully for me in the past 6-7 years including calendar and contacts > the manufacturer doesn't bother to write Linux support or sufficient documentation for you mean documentation, like this? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/web-service-reference/ews-reference-for-exchange https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/w... Microsoft has many flaws, but not writing documentation it's not usually one of them.
    - plus 4y ago
      In addition to Evolution mentioned in another reply, KDE's KMail supports exchange (through Akonadi), and it seems to work quite well for me.
    - 4y ago
  - dizzant 4y ago
    This. I've been looking for a new Exchange client since Outlook Web stopped properly supporting Firefox. I reached immediately for Thunderbird, but switched away quickly because of the need to pay for (somewhat clumsy) Exchange integration. If Owl were free, I wouldn't mind the long delays or weird synchronization issues. As a subscription service, I'll take my business elsewhere.
    - _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
      There's DavMail ( http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ ) - which you can use with Thunderbird or any other client.
    - chrjxnandns 4y ago
      How is OWA not working for you on FF? (Genuinely curious)
      - dizzant 4y ago
        OWA has a known issue with Firefox on Linux where it incorrectly believes that Ctrl is pressed while typing an email. This results in frequent missed characters and spurious actions, including moving focus to the search bar, archiving messages, saving the current message as a draft and closing it, etc. This makes OWA extremely frustrating to use. Another issue with OWA is the unhelpful completions (which I've noted before on HN), which in my experience seem to be related to the spurious actions (more suggested completions = more spurious actions)
        pure_simplicity 4y ago
        Finally, so this is what was happening.
    - fsiefken 4y ago
      What specific long delays or weird synchronization issues do you experience? I just bought the plugin but don't notice any yet with ~7000 mails. Did you find a good alternative? I read above that using DavMail as a proxy can also work.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    Matrix support while the editor itself is left to rot. I finally switched away from self-hosted to Proton. Buh bye thunderbird!
  - Zardoz84 4y ago
    you not need that. Ask to enable SMTP on the exchange server, and use any email client with it.
- cowtools 4y ago
  To be fair, Matrix is a very email-like protocol. I think it makes sense to have it in an email client, especially if you're going to have RSS feeds as well.
  - anotherevan 4y ago
    Agreed, we should take them both out. :-) To be honest though, I'm interested in how the Matrix support will look. While I think the Element client is nice, and certainly the best of the Matrix clients I've tried, I wouldn't mind not having to have that during work hours so much. For RSS, I'm sticking with Newsblur though!
    - abnercoimbre 4y ago
      Thank you for the tip with newsblur! I'm struggling to see pricing info. How much is the subscription?
      - anotherevan 4y ago
        It's about two thirds of the way down the page of https://newsblur.com/ https://newsblur.com/ (when you're not logged in). Paid account is US$36/year. You can sign up with a free try-before-you-buy account to give it a go first, though.
- nirui 4y ago
  > well, but I want it to be a focused app Best of the both worlds can be achieved, for example, with good extension support. That way, Thunderbird devs can focus on a set of core features, while the community handles the rest. Also, why not look Thunderbird as a Communication Software instead of just an Email Client? Let's just face the fact here: email is dying. Once it was one of the most important tools for communicating on the Internet, now days for majority of people, it's just something comes with a Google/Microsoft/Apple account. The protocols (POP3/SMTP/IMAP) are heavily outdated as well, and no one is seriously improving it in order to make them more fitting for today's needs (by improving, I mean to make it more real-time, more multi-media friendly, and more efficient so it can transmit a huge amount of data simultaneously at lighting speed). Just take look how many improvement has been done to HTTP as a comparison, it's sad that email protocols received so little loves. At this circumstances, I would say any optimization done to the ecosystem is welcome. Also, I like the new interface more, IMO it makes Thunderbird at least 10 years younger.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Well the solution to old email protocols is JMAP, which Fastmail supports. But it's going to probably take time until JMAP support really picks up with both mail providers and client developers.
    - nirui 4y ago
      Based on what I've read from RFC8620, their approach is quite smart. It's basically turning email protocol into a set of HTTP RPCs, thus shifts all the transport-related technical problems away. The downside is that, JSON codes creates redundancy, sometime the redundancy is bigger than the meaningful data itself. But on the other side, you can now host an email server behind a web CDN. I like the development overall.
    - tankenmate 4y ago
      JMAP was largely designed by Bron, the CEO of Fastmail, and his team.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
- uni_rule 4y ago
  It makes sense in the context of the program being a spinoff of the Netscape suite (or early Mozilla suite) which had multiple parts including the browser. After all this program still has a NNTP client jammed in it, adding matrix is simply a matter of modernizing what was already there (the original IRC client).
encryptluks2 4y ago
Last I checked Thunderbird still doesn't support Maildir by default and is hidden behind an experimental flag with the following warning: > We suggest you leave Maildir disabled unless you are an advanced user, willing to risk your data, and know how to back up your email before turning on Maildir and how to restore it if you run into problems. Have they fixed that or has other things like Matrix integration taken priority over email?
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  Here are the release notes: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/102.0/releasenotes/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/102.0/releasen...
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    So no proper Maildir support in an email client, but adding chat functionality is higher priority? Geezus... this is the Mozilla we know all too well.
    - gbear605 4y ago
      I don’t know how it actually went down, but since it’s open source software the Matrix integration could have been written by a random developer who doesn’t work for Mozilla.
    - matthewn 4y ago
      Thunderbird has been more than "an email client" for so long that people made the exact same kind of complaint when RSS support was added. Thunderbird is a messaging/communications client, and way more people will benefit from Matrix support than would ever benefit from Maildir support. Further, my understanding from the Thunderbird team's comms is that they are very much in control of their own destiny. I don't get the sense that Mozilla has much say in Thunderbird's roadmap (or even cares) at this point.
      - 4y ago
Zhyl 4y ago
Matrix integration is big. Maybe not for Thunderbird, but this is probably the most venerable application to support it. Probably not surprising as Mozilla moved from IRC to matrix.
MikusR 4y ago
Have they added the ability to increase font size of the email list?
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  I'm sure Matrix and Pocket integration, and adding some more non-email features are more important than email features in an email client.. no?
- sudobash1 4y ago
  I see the option in "view > font size", although it increases the font size across the entire application (not just the email list).
- matthewn 4y ago
  There is a new global font size setting in this release: https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/1539307322043797504 https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/153930732204379750... If you want to target the message list specifically, I'm pretty certain that can be done with a userChrome.css tweak.
- DavideNL 4y ago
  Yea, it changes the font size of the entire UI. I'm so glad they added this feature. The previous font size was tiny, unworkable!
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
digisign 4y ago
Looks nice, but I'm worried they broke more things. It has been a number of releases that the mail pane no longer respects my dark system theme. It looks horrible. Also I have a portrait monitor so not interested in getting rid of title-bars... better be able to keep them and not be forcing a widescreen layout.
jazzyjackson 4y ago
Really nice to see a new matrix client. I was never able to get the hang of the discord UX, I think treating chat “channels” as email threads might be easier for me to grok, now I just need to find some matrix communities to join…
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
krono 4y ago
Glad this is still being actively developed! A little bit odd, perhaps, for an email client to feature Matrix chat functionality but no support for Exchange accounts. Hope it's on their roadmap though.
- tristan957 4y ago
  Why does Thunderbird have to support Exchange and not Microsoft support Thunderbird?
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    because the latter is dominant in the market and you don't get to dictate the terms when you're on life support.
    - cube00 4y ago
      Just look at all the specialisation they had to add to work with GMail's "interpretation" of OAuth2 under threat of regular app passwords being removed by Google.
    - tristan957 4y ago
      Thunderbird raised over 2 million dollars last year. They aren't on life support. They don't need to implement Exchange.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    Exchange does support IMAP, and it works well with Thunderbird. A lot of administrators like to disable it though, but you can't lay the blame for that on Microsoft. You can still use proxies for Exchange's protocol to IMAP and use Exchange with Thunderbird that way. The last time I did this it worked quite well, but does take a bit of time to set up.
    - Tainnor 4y ago
      IMAP doesn't support 2FA which is probably the reason why more security-conscious businesses generally disable it.
mtmail 4y ago
Are they following Firefox version numbers for theeir stable releases? Thunderbird jumps from v91 to v102 (Firefox is currently at v102).
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  91 is the latest stable, 102 is the latest unstable.
- tristan957 4y ago
  Thunderbird rebases on every Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). 91 was the previous ESR release. 102 is the new one.
throwaway81523 4y ago
I wonder if they could fix basic things like letting the user control the font size, before messing with "serious upgrades" which almost always turn out to be downgrades.
- visiblink 4y ago
  This is the issue that keeps me using Claws Mail. With Claws Mail I can set a consistent, universal font size (meaning that the font in each email body is the same size). With Thunderbird, that seems to be impossible, even with a custom .css file.
- tristan957 4y ago
  I can already control the font size on Thunderbird so I'm confused.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    There are many threads on the thunderbird support forum complaining about no way to do this. I have not been able to find a way, at least with 91.7 which is what Debian comes with. If you can tell me how to make all the fonts (not just the ones in certain panes and panels) nice and large, I'd appreciate it. It is for a family member who has weak eyesight.
    - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
      From elsewhere in the thread => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914572
      - throwaway81523 4y ago
        Thanks, nice find, it sounds like they are couthing up about this. I'll see if I can try it out.
        4y ago
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
I'm on an Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop computer. I click on the big green Free Download button. It downloads a .tar.bz2 file. I double-click on that in the Firefox download manager. It opens the Gnome archive extractor. I'm looking at... .gif files? .so files? I see something called "thunderbird" and another thing called "thunderbird-bin". I double-click on those and some other dialog pops up that says "No applications found for 'thunderbird'". Will desktop Linux ever solve these basic usability problems? Or will this always just be user error! you're doing it wrong!
- eointierney 4y ago
  Yes, Linux has (partially) done this already, albeit with some user interface incongruities, check out nixos and guix Hey NixOS and Guix communities! Your theory is awesome, your practice is great, we just need to work on making this trivial for children. Always think of the children
- rtpg 4y ago
  Don’t blame Linux as a whole for Thunderbird not packaging a .deb file. (EDIT: or an AppImage file. I get everyone is not on Ubuntu/Debian)
  - NavinF 4y ago
    I’ll blame Linux as a whole for every app needing several deb files (one per distro Ubuntu/Debian/etc and one per LTS), several rpm files (one per distro RH/Fedora/etc and one per LTS), and several <100+ chars omitted for brevity). On other platforms (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS) it’s fairly common to distribute GUI apps as a single binary so you don’t need an army of package maintainers. Perks of having many years of ABI stability.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      I’d be perfectly fine with everyone switching over to .deb files. Sadly it seems AppImage is more popular these days.
waynesonfire 4y ago
But does it have support for smartkeys? You know, like it use to prior to thunderbird 78. Huge regression dropping support for enigmail plugin and gnugpg for some built in solution that's half complete and as far as I'm aware doesn't support smartcards like yubikey. So crummy.
- kaiengert 4y ago
  Yes, you can use smartcards with S/MIME. You, you can use smartcards with OpenPGP, if you configure Thunderbird for optional GnuPG support. This way Thunderbird can use your secret key that is managed by GnuPG, for secret key operations, including keys on smartcards. How to do that is documented here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards
Animats 4y ago
Oh, gawd, the mobile people got into Thunderbird.
aceazzameen 4y ago
Funny! I just installed Thunderbird two weeks ago and my biggest gripe was importing my contacts from Gmail. It was a bit of a hassle until I used vcards. VCards ended up working but didn't have birthdays? It may have been missing more data too. I haven't verified it all. I might have to try again.
roomey 4y ago
There is of course a flood of negative comments... So in the interest of balance I have to say thunderbird is a excellent program. I use it as my daily driver in work and for personal use. It has so many features that puts me, the user, in control that I totally take them for granted until I have to use outlook for something. I use it in a multinational, I used it with exchange and now with office 365. People can complain away but there are many like me who rely on it every single day and it has a real, positive impact on our work lives every single day. Some days are just email client and Web browser, and without thunderbird and Firefox working for me as the user...... I dunno, work would be a lot more frustrating I guess. MASSIVE thanks to all the contributors to thunderbird!
- digisign 4y ago
  Yer darn tootin'! That's why we don't want it broken.
  - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
    Yes, precisely. I rely on Thunderbird every single day, which is why I froze it at version 60-something (rolling back about four years) after the upgrades kept breaking it and mangling the appearance for me and the other people in my company. It was a lovely mail client. It seems they're repeating all the mistakes that firefox made. Firefox added pocket, everyone disabled it and eventually the feature was removed. Firefox added chat, everybody disabled it and eventually the feature was removed. Now Thunderbird has added chat, that's great. What does it support, Slack? no. Discord? no. Oh. That's not great, then, that's useless. They're intending to jumpstart a chat protocol with a client that's used by like 0.8% of users? Sure. The last update made the context-menus and dropdown-menus white backgrounded menus with literally no border, so you had no way to determine where the menu background ended and the email background started. That was the update that pushed me over the edge and prompted the rollback and push of whatever 60-ish version I chose. My staff need imap and calendaring and consistency. That version delivers. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the 'what spurious UI change will throw my staff into confusion today' game with a basic productivity tool.
mmaunder 4y ago
It’s projects like these that continue to make it feasible to run an entirely open source productivity stack. And that is very important, or a proprietary internet will become the only Internet.
- rambambram 4y ago
  You take the words out of my mouth. This is a strong and important realization, if you ask me.
Tainnor 4y ago
I had to switch to evolution for my work computer because the company uses Exchange accounts and at least with the setup we have, it's not supported in Thunderbird on Linux. Supposedly there's a paid add-on that does this, but even if I was willing to pay for it, I wouldn't know beforehand if it actually works. Evolution supports exchange properly, by contrast (well, I did have to ask my boss to whitelist an app id somewhere in the server settings, but that was no problem). After some initial adjustment, I find evolution equally as capable as thunderbird. Both don't necessarily win design prizes (well maybe this new version of thunderbird does, but certainly not the old one), but if that was important to me, I wouldn't use Linux. :) I would even say that I prefer the calendar integration in evolution.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  The Owl addon[0] has a the first month free, so you can try it out. [0] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/owl-for-exchange/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/owl-f...
Diti 4y ago
Kudos to Thunderbird for being the only reliable Windows email client to get S/MIME certificates right. A feature that no current webmail implemented.
- jcims 4y ago
  That just boggles my mind. I worked for an ecommerce company in 1998 and told them they should just use S/MIME instead of some bullshit proprietary encryption mechanism they used with their messaging client. It just works. But 24 years later encrypted email is still a mess.
  - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
    >But 24 years later encrypted email is still a mess. By design. Why do you think gmail strips encrypted archive attachments? Surprised they even allow S/MIME.
    - kccqzy 4y ago
      > Why do you think gmail strips encrypted archive attachments? Because Gmail can't scan for malware inside those attachments?
      - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
        That's the stated reason, but it isn't the one I believe.
      - LaGrange 4y ago
        That's like solving air pollution issues by strangling people.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    Probably because S/MIME is too expensive to reach critical mass.
    - 4y ago
plannnnnt 4y ago
reagle 4y ago
I’m still stuck pre78 because I like to use an external editor. https://github.com/exteditor/exteditor/issues/74 https://github.com/exteditor/exteditor/issues/74
yyyk 4y ago
Cool, a UI upgrade. Yet they still omit proper tray support on Linux, barring hacks (birdtray, systray-x, etc.). Oh, well. At least it's maintained.
miles 4y ago
Glad to see Maildir support hasn't fallen off the map: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir > Maildir is a message storage format that should improve data safety, allow for incremental (delta) backups of messages and allow for antivirus to interact better with messages. Maildir will be vastly improved for 102, but may not be pref'd on by default. > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=845952 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=845952
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  They should be focusing their efforts on this instead of Matrix integration IMHO.
- Scramblejams 4y ago
  Me too! The lack of maildir was one of three reasons I moved to Evolution. Boring backup tools would generate a huge incremental any time I used Thunderbird. The second is that it didn’t deal well with accounts where I might’ve had 50-100k messages in the inbox. Lots of intermittent freezing during interaction. Finally, I used it for a decade but it never seemed to be without memory leaks. I wasn’t using any extensions, it just leaked. Had to restart it every day. Evolution doesn’t have any of these issues. Would love to come back to it, though!
  - spopejoy 4y ago
    TIL Evolution is still a thing. I switched from Evolution to Thunderbird in 2005 and never went back ...
siraben 4y ago
I've been using Thunderbird on and off for several years now, but I'm repeatedly confused by the search feature. Has anyone else found it inadequate?
- addicted 4y ago
  I’ve found search results are pretty good. I don’t like the UI for the results I get. It just seems really strange and incompatible with the rest of the application.
- endorphine 4y ago
  Now that you mention it, yes. But I'm not sure what it is specifically. For what it's worth, I usually find myself trying both searching for something and if I don't find what I'm looking for, I resort to filtering. Maybe that's a clue for what confuses me. Also, I think I don't know in which mail accounts it is searching (everywhere or the current one)? And sometimes I _think_ it doesn't find things that are there and I find them differently.
- AnonC 4y ago
  I've been a long time Thunderbird user (except for the last few years). The global search feature was a good addition when it was launched, but it doesn't work very well and it doesn't seem like more effort was put into fixing/improving it. What I've observed is that using it to find specific emails may or may not work. I'm not talking about search performance but about the quality of results and the ability to narrow down. My mailbox was already a several GBs in size at that time.
defrost 4y ago
My only current grief with Thunderbird is minor. I recently circled about RSS feeds again and looked into "not Browser Addon" RSS clients - Feedbro as an extension is pretty good, has some shortcomings, and requires the browser to be left active 24/7 to catch ALL of a few of the feeds I follow. Thunderbird accepts RSS feeds but, for better or worse, is extremely strict about only accepting fully compliant RSS | ATOM spec verified feeds. There are a number of older "RSS feeds" that are compliant XML but missing a few recent feature fields - these work in Feedbro and other more accepting clients but fail in Thunderbird. It's a minor quibble, I should write a note to the devs I guess, but it did dash my idea of having the one email+RSS feed hub active 24|7.
- mario_kart_snes 4y ago
  I love Feedbro, but agree it's slightly unfortunate you have to run it in browser. Running Feedbro as standalone would be cool.
clircle 4y ago
Long Live Thunderbird
- sph 4y ago
  Eh it should just die so it can be born again. I feel it's glacial in its updates and unfocused. People that like its current iteration are OK with it, people that want a more modern email client have to wait 5 more years, but then it'll be 5 years out of date.
Klonoar 4y ago
Any reason that the Matrix blurb is the only one without a graphic attached? I'm curious to see how it looks. Edit: ah, there's an image here at least https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/thunderbird https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/thunderbird
- preya2k 4y ago
  I supposed they don't feel very confident about the UI. When I looked at the Nightly a couple of weeks ago, the UI experience inside tha Matrix features was horrible. I hope this has been fixed/will be fixed soon.
  - eddieroger 4y ago
    I downloaded Thunderbird just to play with Matrix integration, and I think this is the right answer. The rest of the UI looks much more refreshed and new, and the Matrix window feels a lot closer to older IRC apps than anything else. Not that it's a problem, just an observation, but I would prefer it looks a little newer and fresher, personally.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Does the 'chat' space in the sidebar glow/flash/gain a number when you have an unread message that needs your attention?
drewzero1 4y ago
A few months ago I was tasked with switching our office from Gmail's web interface to Thunderbird and it's gone surprisingly well. Usually new software meets a lot of resistance and complaints from the staff, but I've heard mostly praise. I've been playing around with a testing version (beta? nightly? can't remember) and am very excited about the chat integration. I'm not sure if it will be useful in the office, which is small enough for people to just talk to one another, but it could come in handy in some circumstances where we'd normally use an email chain.
- wanderingmind 4y ago
  How do you handle calendar invites from thunderbird to include a google meet link?
  - timwis 4y ago
    Fantastical can do this, so I assume/hope there’s a plug-in for it.
  - drewzero1 4y ago
    We haven't tried... our office is small enough that we just use paper calendars, and rarely need to arrange meetings or other events beyond a few people.
  - FastMonkey 4y ago
    That's kind of funny, our problem with Google calendar is that it keeps adding that when we don't want it!
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Paste in any just-thought-up Jitsi URL.
- wonderbore 4y ago
  > switching our office from Gmail's web interface to Thunderbird For what reason? Are they planning to leave Gmail? That’s just about the only reason for an office to mandate a specific UI for email.
lobocinza 4y ago
I've tried Thunderbird and Evolution a few times in the past and I'll will not be fooled again. The experience is always the same: clunky interface, sync issues and a lot of time wasted. With Thunderbird I had to install a few extensions just to have some that barely was a proper Mail/Contacts/Calendar integration. Nowadays I just run the default web app in Ferdium and use vdirsyncer to backup my mail and calendars to disk. And I use Evolution only because Gnome uses it for showing my events on the shell calendar. Like it or not Gmail (and Fastmail) interfaces are great and native PIM is dead.
seraphine 4y ago
Thunderbird is finally paying attention to the UI side of things. Hopefully they finally implement the standard multiline email list view which has been on the back burner for 19 years XD https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945
- toomim 4y ago
  Noooooo... The reason I switched to thunderbird is that it displays each email on a single line, which is sooooo much more information dense, and thus efficient! There's no better way to manage a large amount of email than displaying a large amount on screen!
  - seraphine 4y ago
    Even if they add it, the single-line display will always be around. It isn't mutually exclusive by any means. All clients that support multiline also have single-line support.
    - toomim 4y ago
      Nope. Mail.app removed it long ago. iOS mail has never had it. Even gmail is less info-dense than it could be, as it routinely increases the padding and margins for each message, even with the most dense view.
- teddyh 4y ago
  A recent poster in that thread claims that multiline email list view is now implemented: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945#c214 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945#c214
  - sph 4y ago
    It's been implemented in a fork, not in thunderbird.
bprasanna 4y ago
I really appreciate the Thunderbird development team for proactively going through the list of add-ons and reaching out to the add-on developers if there is any concern to be addressed before moving the add-ons to 102. I can feel the commitment to keep Thunderbird a great email client.
grilla001 4y ago
newsarchive88 4y ago
The beast is back...
rambambram 4y ago
Nice, I like Thunderbird! Can't wait to use the import/export wizard. I always thought it a little strange to install add-ons for this functionality. I'm also very curious to their Matrix support. I've heard about it, and maybe this move from Thunderbird makes it more accessible. Also, a reminder to self: donate some money to the Thunderbird development team.
bigpeopleareold 4y ago
I tried TB once a year or two ago - it was slow and the GUI was hard to read (maybe the same design worked on lower resolutions?) I completely forgot what I used in the 2000s, it could have been TB. A month ago, I gave it another shot. Not slow, GUI still hard to read, but at least there is a nice theme I found that now makes it usable ("Monterail Full Dark" is what I use). With that, I decided to stick with TB; it feels very comfortable and feels better than jumping into all the different webmail clients for various email addresses I have. I am curious to see what 102's UI re-design will bring.
anujkumars 4y ago
its bike or company.. please suggest
- lproven 4y ago
  It is neither. https://www.thunderbird.net/ https://www.thunderbird.net/
spacechild1 4y ago
Happy Thunderbird user here. Just wanted to say thanks!
- endorphine 4y ago
  Add me to the list! Thanks to the team working on Thunderbird!
m-ueberall 4y ago
If you're already using an older version of Thunderbird, be sure to first check https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/addon-compatibility-check/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/addon... (Addon Compatibility Check for TB 102) ...
linker3000 4y ago
Trying to use Thunderbird in the corporate world was frustrating - but just for two reasons: 1) Accepted recurring calendar events that started in the past would pop up reminders that could not be dismissed (they would just pop up again immediately). 2) Thunderbird had problems embedding meeting links in the calendar event (especially, if the meeting was rescheduled), so you'd have to go find the original meeting invite email. For those two reasons, I ended up installing Outlook to handle corporate stuff while TB took care of everything else. I see from the release notes that these two issues have been worked on so I'll have to see what happens when I re-add my corporate account again; it will be great if the calendar is fixed.
- GRBurst 4y ago
  Yeah, these things are not handled very well in TB. What you can do: For 1) You can configure TB to not show event notifications from the past For 2) Things improved at least a bit, so for me, this is usable now
  - linker3000 4y ago
    I found that #1 occurred for all events as they rolled forwards, so, for example, if the event occurred every Wednesday and the first one was in January, I will get a popup for today's meeting, but I will not be able to dismiss it on TB - I'd have to use my phone to delete the current event once it had passed to stop the nagging.
    - heavenlyblue 4y ago
      Yeah, I had exactly the same issue.
  - agilob 4y ago
    >You can configure TB to not show event notifications from the past How do I do that?
mdrzn 4y ago
I really can't stand how SLOW Thunderbird is, from starting the app to doing searches, to any action at all. Even with 32gb ram, i9-9900, SSDs.. sooooo slow.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  i9 with 64gb of ram and a Samsung pro SSD. I have no issues. Either your mailbox is substantially bigger or your database is broken.
  - mdrzn 4y ago
    I have the 16years old Gmail in it, so that must be the cause. Should I just delete the .db and let it rebuild? Would that fix/mitigate the issue?
    - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
      I don’t know, please backup .Mozilla or whatever path it sits in before you experiment. Another use in this thread suggested deleting .db, but ymmv
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  MacBook Air M1, 16Gb RAM. Opening TB takes <2s and everything is snappy. Searches are very fast. I still find the UI and UX a bit clunky but performance has not been an issue for me.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Doing this will speed it up: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-datab...
dusted 4y ago
my knee jerk reaction is "oh god no why!?" but I guess I'll just keep using it because it's what I've always used..
teekert 4y ago
I love the new look, and Matrix, as far as I'm concerned is the only true alternative to Email with its fully open protocol, open source server and multitude of clients! Absolutely great move, and it looks great too! Now I can just tell family to use Thunderbird and they already have their first Matrix client, which they can install on mobile in a jiffy. It would be nice if it could make another dent in Whatsapp's monopoly (in my country). I just hope account creation is easy... Will check it out! Thanx TB team!
anony999 4y ago
This looks great! The only reason I didn't fully migrate to Thunderbird yet is the search feature which seems to be lacking in some areas compared with the mail.app
- timbit42 4y ago
  The search feature doesn't bother me because I never have to use it. My email is organized.
  - anony999 4y ago
    If you run a business you need it (i.e. the accountant is asking you to resend invoice number xyz)
black_puppydog 4y ago
I took this as a reminder to finally set up Thunderbird for my work email. After figuring out that gmail login will only work with cookies being enabled in the setting I am super happy to finally have a sane folder & filtering interface. I'll probably stick with google's UI for the agendas for now, but overall this is being really smooth. Ironically, the search in thunderbird, while not perfect, is so much better than on gmail, where I often have trouble finding emails from half an hour ago, searching for the exact subject line. EDIT: and spam filtering! It's amazing how many really important emails gmail flagged as spam for me. Like, mails coming from colleagues on the same custom domain, as replies to emails I sent them. I really don't get why people use google's products, honestly. At this point it's just pure monopoly I guess, and increasingly network effects since the big providers don't play well with smaller ones.
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  > out that gmail login will only work with cookies being enabled What are other options of having your web-based client log into your email?
  - black_puppydog 4y ago
    I meant I have to enable cookies in Thunderbird to be able to log into my gmail account via oauth
    - ordinary 4y ago
      Only for the first time. Subsequent times work even with cookies disabled.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  And I thought outlook (live.com)'s spam filtering was bad. It just doesn't seem like it should be that hard of a problem to solve - there's almost no case as a human I can't instantly tell that an email is spam or not-spam and give a concrete reason why. E.g. almost any email that uses my real name in the greeting isn't spam, and certainly one that's a reply to an email I've sent, yet I've seen examples of both end up in junk folders. It's distinguishing important emails specifically written to me providing key info or requiring my response vs mass-email or automatically generated email that I would think is a harder problem, but live.com seems to do it moderately well. If Thunderbird does auto categorization well that'd be reason enough to try it out (but where does the categorization execute, if you're using it from multiple devices?)
mgaunard 4y ago
I stopped using Thunderbird with version 3 when all the new database indexing features made it very slow and unusable. Haven't tried it again since then.
nswest23 4y ago
Serious question: what is the point of an email client?
- StuffMaster 4y ago
  To use email.
- timbit42 4y ago
  More consistent user interface because web email user interfaces change regularly. Ability to read/reply if the internet is down or you are traveling outside of internet areas. Easier and faster to make backups of your email and contacts. More features than web email interfaces.
cycomanic 4y ago
I really wish muttator was still working. It was an extension which turned thunderbird into mutt with a GUI, in other words a keyboard driven email client without the hassle of dealing with calendars, HTML, images... of cli clients. Also unfortunately firenvim (an extension to use Neovim for textfields) is currently broken.
cutler 4y ago
Unusable Address Book. For me horizontal view is essential and now it's borked, ie. all email addresses lumped together as Email Addresses and the same for Phone Numbers and Addresses. How can this possibly be touted as an improvement? For me it's exactly the opposite. Columns are no longer resizable and the Notes section, which I rely on heavily, has been reduced in size YET AGAIN. Mozilla, there's an old adage - If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It. Switching back to 91 immediately and looking to disable updates.
pers0n 4y ago
I've been using Thunderbird for decades, nice to see color is back!
ruph123 4y ago
I really wish they would do away with tabs. Somehow this has always bothered me about TB. I don't know why. Maybe because it adds more layers in ehat should be a clean interface. Or maybe it is just tab-anxiety I have from using browsers. I just don't want to micro-manage tabs in my email client.
awinter-py 4y ago
recently tried to switch to desktop from web gmail -- logging into gmail with a client is terrifying and painful typing my google password into a random popup isn't exactly confidence inspiring -- neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented hard to set up threading, sync took forever before newest part of inbox was ready, unclear impact on how replies look IMO it's 2022 and the open niche for email clients is 'offramp from gmail' -- how can I get a temporary gmail-like experience on desktop w/out an overnight sync, without a giant security hole, and with minimal changed experience. Solve this and you can eventually migrate people to other email hosting.
- apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
  > neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented You can't have done that recently. Less Secure Apps was recently deprecated and removed. They've been actively discouraging using it for around 5 years. Thunderbird has supported the OAuth flow for Gmail since at least 2017 (I swear it's been there longer, but 2017 is the earliest reference I can find). It's used it as the default option when detecting Gmail since before COVID at least. It did promote the use of "Less Secure Apps" previously and that option was still available after the introduction of OAuth, but not as the default. I no longer use Thunderbird (I switched to Spark, which solved a number of issues I was experiencing with unread email counts), but it's been a pretty good experience for a long time. Especially if you have multiple email accounts from different providers.
  - awinter-py 4y ago
    ah you're right, I created an app password -- didn't use less secure apps assumed they had just renamed it
wufocaculura 4y ago
So happy that thunderbird is still alive :) I like the new UI - seems a bit more compact than previous one - a nice chnage comparing to useless space wasted in most of the apps we have today. Hope they will focus on editor in the upcoming versions - if only they could make html tables as good as they are in Outlook...
nsxwolf 4y ago
I haven't looked at Thunderbird in over 10 years so I decided to download it. It was very easy to set up my Gmail account. My initial impression is that it is delightfully old-fashioned. It reminds me of the mail clients we used to use in the good old days - The list view has tiny fonts and is packed with all kinds of information. It isn't at all "slick" like Apple Mail or even Outlook. It feels clunky, like it's an ancient codebase that's been redesigned a million times. But it's charming.
jsilence 4y ago
Its all nice and dandy and I really appreciate that development of Thunderbird has awoken from its hiatus, but I really really wish they would fix the Maildir storage and make it standards compatible, so that one can use other mail tools like offlineimap (aka nbsync) or mu on the same Maildir store. Please let form follow function... Edit: some other user pointed out that Maildir support is on the roadmap: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir Great news!!
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Surprisingly impressive. Matrix integration is excellent, and loving the configurable UI modernizations, especially being able to simplify it in some areas. The least worst of current email clients, but there's always room for improvement, though email is never going to be glam to develop a client for. Now, if only I could sync accounts and configs between devices without a bodge of a workaround. That would be fantastic, especially with the new Android client.

811 points by moojacob 4y ago

I don't really care about icons and I don't use contacts. What would be nice though is to be able to customize things like putting those stars on all unread email instead of just "new" email, whatever that is. The read/unread tiny dot is hard to see especially for the current highlighted message. I've used tbird forever and it is otherwise awesome. Thanks.

sudobash1 4y ago

> One of the core philosophies behind the development of Thunderbird 102 was doing more with less. > ...you’ll find out-of-box support for the popular, decentralized chat protocol Matrix in Thunderbird 102 Personally, I see these two statements as being directly contradictory. I'm glad to see Thunderbird's maintenance continuing well, but I want it to be a focused app. On the other hand, I have been glad to have out of the box Lightning integration, so perhaps I will come to enjoy the Matrix addition as well.

Closi 4y ago
Ah yes, Matrix support added before Exchange support!
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Honest question: is exchange support still relevant nowadays? A lot of companies seem to have switched to Office365 which is not the same thing and most of the one I have worked with block third-party clients in their security policies.
  - nvr219 4y ago
    I've always used Exchange support to include Exchange Online support and yes that's very important. I would switch to Thunderbird the day they announced full Exchange support.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Office365 is pretty much just Exchange underneath. And tons of larger orgs still use on-prem Exchange. Microsoft just announced the next version of on-premise Exchange for launch in 2024. As cloud costs ratchet up and the weaknesses become more apparent, I suspect you'll see orgs start migrating back away from the cloud.
  - gpanders 4y ago
    Unfortunately yes. Some organizations (like mine) use Office365 and disable IMAP/SMTP, so the only way to interface to the mail server is via Exchange :(
  - Arn_Thor 4y ago
    You'd be surprised. In certain sectors, companies prefer to keep as little as possible of their sensitive information in the cloud, emails included. Running their own exchange server is a common way to do that.
- addicted 4y ago
  Exchange support is probably ridiculously hard because I can’t imagine there’s all that many open source implementations for it. Matrix support is probably a ton easier. Besides, matrix is designed to be implemented by multiple parties. Exchange isn’t. In fact, exchange is almost certainly the opposite.
  - digisign 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Evolution Believe there are libraries available as well.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      The exchange support for Evolution never worked well for me. There was always something that didn't sync, didn't get detected, or wasn't supported. I don't blame the devs, Exchange is a proprietary standard so you can't expect it to work well. It's like the reverse-engineered drivers for hardware the manufacturer doesn't bother to write Linux support or sufficient documentation for: it doesn't work great, but that's despite the devs' best effort, not because of it.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > The exchange support for Evolution never worked well for me. it has been working beautifully for me in the past 6-7 years including calendar and contacts > the manufacturer doesn't bother to write Linux support or sufficient documentation for you mean documentation, like this? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/web-service-reference/ews-reference-for-exchange https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/client-developer/w... Microsoft has many flaws, but not writing documentation it's not usually one of them.
  - plus 4y ago
    In addition to Evolution mentioned in another reply, KDE's KMail supports exchange (through Akonadi), and it seems to work quite well for me.
  - 4y ago
- dizzant 4y ago
  This. I've been looking for a new Exchange client since Outlook Web stopped properly supporting Firefox. I reached immediately for Thunderbird, but switched away quickly because of the need to pay for (somewhat clumsy) Exchange integration. If Owl were free, I wouldn't mind the long delays or weird synchronization issues. As a subscription service, I'll take my business elsewhere.
  - _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
    There's DavMail ( http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ ) - which you can use with Thunderbird or any other client.
  - chrjxnandns 4y ago
    How is OWA not working for you on FF? (Genuinely curious)
    - dizzant 4y ago
      OWA has a known issue with Firefox on Linux where it incorrectly believes that Ctrl is pressed while typing an email. This results in frequent missed characters and spurious actions, including moving focus to the search bar, archiving messages, saving the current message as a draft and closing it, etc. This makes OWA extremely frustrating to use. Another issue with OWA is the unhelpful completions (which I've noted before on HN), which in my experience seem to be related to the spurious actions (more suggested completions = more spurious actions)
      - pure_simplicity 4y ago
        Finally, so this is what was happening.
  - fsiefken 4y ago
    What specific long delays or weird synchronization issues do you experience? I just bought the plugin but don't notice any yet with ~7000 mails. Did you find a good alternative? I read above that using DavMail as a proxy can also work.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Matrix support while the editor itself is left to rot. I finally switched away from self-hosted to Proton. Buh bye thunderbird!
- Zardoz84 4y ago
  you not need that. Ask to enable SMTP on the exchange server, and use any email client with it.
cowtools 4y ago
To be fair, Matrix is a very email-like protocol. I think it makes sense to have it in an email client, especially if you're going to have RSS feeds as well.
- anotherevan 4y ago
  Agreed, we should take them both out. :-) To be honest though, I'm interested in how the Matrix support will look. While I think the Element client is nice, and certainly the best of the Matrix clients I've tried, I wouldn't mind not having to have that during work hours so much. For RSS, I'm sticking with Newsblur though!
  - abnercoimbre 4y ago
    Thank you for the tip with newsblur! I'm struggling to see pricing info. How much is the subscription?
    - anotherevan 4y ago
      It's about two thirds of the way down the page of https://newsblur.com/ https://newsblur.com/ (when you're not logged in). Paid account is US$36/year. You can sign up with a free try-before-you-buy account to give it a go first, though.
nirui 4y ago
> well, but I want it to be a focused app Best of the both worlds can be achieved, for example, with good extension support. That way, Thunderbird devs can focus on a set of core features, while the community handles the rest. Also, why not look Thunderbird as a Communication Software instead of just an Email Client? Let's just face the fact here: email is dying. Once it was one of the most important tools for communicating on the Internet, now days for majority of people, it's just something comes with a Google/Microsoft/Apple account. The protocols (POP3/SMTP/IMAP) are heavily outdated as well, and no one is seriously improving it in order to make them more fitting for today's needs (by improving, I mean to make it more real-time, more multi-media friendly, and more efficient so it can transmit a huge amount of data simultaneously at lighting speed). Just take look how many improvement has been done to HTTP as a comparison, it's sad that email protocols received so little loves. At this circumstances, I would say any optimization done to the ecosystem is welcome. Also, I like the new interface more, IMO it makes Thunderbird at least 10 years younger.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Well the solution to old email protocols is JMAP, which Fastmail supports. But it's going to probably take time until JMAP support really picks up with both mail providers and client developers.
  - nirui 4y ago
    Based on what I've read from RFC8620, their approach is quite smart. It's basically turning email protocol into a set of HTTP RPCs, thus shifts all the transport-related technical problems away. The downside is that, JSON codes creates redundancy, sometime the redundancy is bigger than the meaningful data itself. But on the other side, you can now host an email server behind a web CDN. I like the development overall.
  - tankenmate 4y ago
    JMAP was largely designed by Bron, the CEO of Fastmail, and his team.
- einpoklum 4y ago
uni_rule 4y ago
It makes sense in the context of the program being a spinoff of the Netscape suite (or early Mozilla suite) which had multiple parts including the browser. After all this program still has a NNTP client jammed in it, adding matrix is simply a matter of modernizing what was already there (the original IRC client).

encryptluks2 4y ago

Last I checked Thunderbird still doesn't support Maildir by default and is hidden behind an experimental flag with the following warning: > We suggest you leave Maildir disabled unless you are an advanced user, willing to risk your data, and know how to back up your email before turning on Maildir and how to restore it if you run into problems. Have they fixed that or has other things like Matrix integration taken priority over email?

SiempreViernes 4y ago
Here are the release notes: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/102.0/releasenotes/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/102.0/releasen...
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  So no proper Maildir support in an email client, but adding chat functionality is higher priority? Geezus... this is the Mozilla we know all too well.
  - gbear605 4y ago
    I don’t know how it actually went down, but since it’s open source software the Matrix integration could have been written by a random developer who doesn’t work for Mozilla.
  - matthewn 4y ago
    Thunderbird has been more than "an email client" for so long that people made the exact same kind of complaint when RSS support was added. Thunderbird is a messaging/communications client, and way more people will benefit from Matrix support than would ever benefit from Maildir support. Further, my understanding from the Thunderbird team's comms is that they are very much in control of their own destiny. I don't get the sense that Mozilla has much say in Thunderbird's roadmap (or even cares) at this point.
    - 4y ago

Zhyl 4y ago

Matrix integration is big. Maybe not for Thunderbird, but this is probably the most venerable application to support it. Probably not surprising as Mozilla moved from IRC to matrix.

MikusR 4y ago

Have they added the ability to increase font size of the email list?

encryptluks2 4y ago
I'm sure Matrix and Pocket integration, and adding some more non-email features are more important than email features in an email client.. no?
sudobash1 4y ago
I see the option in "view > font size", although it increases the font size across the entire application (not just the email list).
matthewn 4y ago
There is a new global font size setting in this release: https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/1539307322043797504 https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/153930732204379750... If you want to target the message list specifically, I'm pretty certain that can be done with a userChrome.css tweak.
DavideNL 4y ago
Yea, it changes the font size of the entire UI. I'm so glad they added this feature. The previous font size was tiny, unworkable!

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

digisign 4y ago

Looks nice, but I'm worried they broke more things. It has been a number of releases that the mail pane no longer respects my dark system theme. It looks horrible. Also I have a portrait monitor so not interested in getting rid of title-bars... better be able to keep them and not be forcing a widescreen layout.

jazzyjackson 4y ago

Really nice to see a new matrix client. I was never able to get the hang of the discord UX, I think treating chat “channels” as email threads might be easier for me to grok, now I just need to find some matrix communities to join…

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

krono 4y ago

Glad this is still being actively developed! A little bit odd, perhaps, for an email client to feature Matrix chat functionality but no support for Exchange accounts. Hope it's on their roadmap though.

tristan957 4y ago
Why does Thunderbird have to support Exchange and not Microsoft support Thunderbird?
- Barrin92 4y ago
  because the latter is dominant in the market and you don't get to dictate the terms when you're on life support.
  - cube00 4y ago
    Just look at all the specialisation they had to add to work with GMail's "interpretation" of OAuth2 under threat of regular app passwords being removed by Google.
  - tristan957 4y ago
    Thunderbird raised over 2 million dollars last year. They aren't on life support. They don't need to implement Exchange.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Exchange does support IMAP, and it works well with Thunderbird. A lot of administrators like to disable it though, but you can't lay the blame for that on Microsoft. You can still use proxies for Exchange's protocol to IMAP and use Exchange with Thunderbird that way. The last time I did this it worked quite well, but does take a bit of time to set up.
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    IMAP doesn't support 2FA which is probably the reason why more security-conscious businesses generally disable it.

mtmail 4y ago

Are they following Firefox version numbers for theeir stable releases? Thunderbird jumps from v91 to v102 (Firefox is currently at v102).

Night_Thastus 4y ago
91 is the latest stable, 102 is the latest unstable.
tristan957 4y ago
Thunderbird rebases on every Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). 91 was the previous ESR release. 102 is the new one.

throwaway81523 4y ago

I wonder if they could fix basic things like letting the user control the font size, before messing with "serious upgrades" which almost always turn out to be downgrades.

visiblink 4y ago
This is the issue that keeps me using Claws Mail. With Claws Mail I can set a consistent, universal font size (meaning that the font in each email body is the same size). With Thunderbird, that seems to be impossible, even with a custom .css file.
tristan957 4y ago
I can already control the font size on Thunderbird so I'm confused.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  There are many threads on the thunderbird support forum complaining about no way to do this. I have not been able to find a way, at least with 91.7 which is what Debian comes with. If you can tell me how to make all the fonts (not just the ones in certain panes and panels) nice and large, I'd appreciate it. It is for a family member who has weak eyesight.
  - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
    From elsewhere in the thread => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914572
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      Thanks, nice find, it sounds like they are couthing up about this. I'll see if I can try it out.
      - 4y ago

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago

I'm on an Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop computer. I click on the big green Free Download button. It downloads a .tar.bz2 file. I double-click on that in the Firefox download manager. It opens the Gnome archive extractor. I'm looking at... .gif files? .so files? I see something called "thunderbird" and another thing called "thunderbird-bin". I double-click on those and some other dialog pops up that says "No applications found for 'thunderbird'". Will desktop Linux ever solve these basic usability problems? Or will this always just be user error! you're doing it wrong!

eointierney 4y ago
Yes, Linux has (partially) done this already, albeit with some user interface incongruities, check out nixos and guix Hey NixOS and Guix communities! Your theory is awesome, your practice is great, we just need to work on making this trivial for children. Always think of the children
rtpg 4y ago
Don’t blame Linux as a whole for Thunderbird not packaging a .deb file. (EDIT: or an AppImage file. I get everyone is not on Ubuntu/Debian)
- NavinF 4y ago
  I’ll blame Linux as a whole for every app needing several deb files (one per distro Ubuntu/Debian/etc and one per LTS), several rpm files (one per distro RH/Fedora/etc and one per LTS), and several <100+ chars omitted for brevity). On other platforms (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS) it’s fairly common to distribute GUI apps as a single binary so you don’t need an army of package maintainers. Perks of having many years of ABI stability.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I’d be perfectly fine with everyone switching over to .deb files. Sadly it seems AppImage is more popular these days.

waynesonfire 4y ago

But does it have support for smartkeys? You know, like it use to prior to thunderbird 78. Huge regression dropping support for enigmail plugin and gnugpg for some built in solution that's half complete and as far as I'm aware doesn't support smartcards like yubikey. So crummy.

kaiengert 4y ago
Yes, you can use smartcards with S/MIME. You, you can use smartcards with OpenPGP, if you configure Thunderbird for optional GnuPG support. This way Thunderbird can use your secret key that is managed by GnuPG, for secret key operations, including keys on smartcards. How to do that is documented here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards

Animats 4y ago

Oh, gawd, the mobile people got into Thunderbird.

aceazzameen 4y ago

Funny! I just installed Thunderbird two weeks ago and my biggest gripe was importing my contacts from Gmail. It was a bit of a hassle until I used vcards. VCards ended up working but didn't have birthdays? It may have been missing more data too. I haven't verified it all. I might have to try again.

roomey 4y ago

There is of course a flood of negative comments... So in the interest of balance I have to say thunderbird is a excellent program. I use it as my daily driver in work and for personal use. It has so many features that puts me, the user, in control that I totally take them for granted until I have to use outlook for something. I use it in a multinational, I used it with exchange and now with office 365. People can complain away but there are many like me who rely on it every single day and it has a real, positive impact on our work lives every single day. Some days are just email client and Web browser, and without thunderbird and Firefox working for me as the user...... I dunno, work would be a lot more frustrating I guess. MASSIVE thanks to all the contributors to thunderbird!

digisign 4y ago
Yer darn tootin'! That's why we don't want it broken.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
  Yes, precisely. I rely on Thunderbird every single day, which is why I froze it at version 60-something (rolling back about four years) after the upgrades kept breaking it and mangling the appearance for me and the other people in my company. It was a lovely mail client. It seems they're repeating all the mistakes that firefox made. Firefox added pocket, everyone disabled it and eventually the feature was removed. Firefox added chat, everybody disabled it and eventually the feature was removed. Now Thunderbird has added chat, that's great. What does it support, Slack? no. Discord? no. Oh. That's not great, then, that's useless. They're intending to jumpstart a chat protocol with a client that's used by like 0.8% of users? Sure. The last update made the context-menus and dropdown-menus white backgrounded menus with literally no border, so you had no way to determine where the menu background ended and the email background started. That was the update that pushed me over the edge and prompted the rollback and push of whatever 60-ish version I chose. My staff need imap and calendaring and consistency. That version delivers. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the 'what spurious UI change will throw my staff into confusion today' game with a basic productivity tool.

mmaunder 4y ago

It’s projects like these that continue to make it feasible to run an entirely open source productivity stack. And that is very important, or a proprietary internet will become the only Internet.

rambambram 4y ago
You take the words out of my mouth. This is a strong and important realization, if you ask me.

Tainnor 4y ago

I had to switch to evolution for my work computer because the company uses Exchange accounts and at least with the setup we have, it's not supported in Thunderbird on Linux. Supposedly there's a paid add-on that does this, but even if I was willing to pay for it, I wouldn't know beforehand if it actually works. Evolution supports exchange properly, by contrast (well, I did have to ask my boss to whitelist an app id somewhere in the server settings, but that was no problem). After some initial adjustment, I find evolution equally as capable as thunderbird. Both don't necessarily win design prizes (well maybe this new version of thunderbird does, but certainly not the old one), but if that was important to me, I wouldn't use Linux. :) I would even say that I prefer the calendar integration in evolution.

red_trumpet 4y ago
The Owl addon[0] has a the first month free, so you can try it out. [0] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/owl-for-exchange/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/owl-f...

Diti 4y ago

Kudos to Thunderbird for being the only reliable Windows email client to get S/MIME certificates right. A feature that no current webmail implemented.

jcims 4y ago
That just boggles my mind. I worked for an ecommerce company in 1998 and told them they should just use S/MIME instead of some bullshit proprietary encryption mechanism they used with their messaging client. It just works. But 24 years later encrypted email is still a mess.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
  >But 24 years later encrypted email is still a mess. By design. Why do you think gmail strips encrypted archive attachments? Surprised they even allow S/MIME.
  - kccqzy 4y ago
    > Why do you think gmail strips encrypted archive attachments? Because Gmail can't scan for malware inside those attachments?
    - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
      That's the stated reason, but it isn't the one I believe.
    - LaGrange 4y ago
      That's like solving air pollution issues by strangling people.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Probably because S/MIME is too expensive to reach critical mass.
  - 4y ago

plannnnnt 4y ago

reagle 4y ago

I’m still stuck pre78 because I like to use an external editor. https://github.com/exteditor/exteditor/issues/74 https://github.com/exteditor/exteditor/issues/74

yyyk 4y ago

Cool, a UI upgrade. Yet they still omit proper tray support on Linux, barring hacks (birdtray, systray-x, etc.). Oh, well. At least it's maintained.

miles 4y ago

Glad to see Maildir support hasn't fallen off the map: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir > Maildir is a message storage format that should improve data safety, allow for incremental (delta) backups of messages and allow for antivirus to interact better with messages. Maildir will be vastly improved for 102, but may not be pref'd on by default. > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=845952 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=845952

encryptluks2 4y ago
They should be focusing their efforts on this instead of Matrix integration IMHO.
Scramblejams 4y ago
Me too! The lack of maildir was one of three reasons I moved to Evolution. Boring backup tools would generate a huge incremental any time I used Thunderbird. The second is that it didn’t deal well with accounts where I might’ve had 50-100k messages in the inbox. Lots of intermittent freezing during interaction. Finally, I used it for a decade but it never seemed to be without memory leaks. I wasn’t using any extensions, it just leaked. Had to restart it every day. Evolution doesn’t have any of these issues. Would love to come back to it, though!
- spopejoy 4y ago
  TIL Evolution is still a thing. I switched from Evolution to Thunderbird in 2005 and never went back ...

siraben 4y ago

I've been using Thunderbird on and off for several years now, but I'm repeatedly confused by the search feature. Has anyone else found it inadequate?

addicted 4y ago
I’ve found search results are pretty good. I don’t like the UI for the results I get. It just seems really strange and incompatible with the rest of the application.
endorphine 4y ago
Now that you mention it, yes. But I'm not sure what it is specifically. For what it's worth, I usually find myself trying both searching for something and if I don't find what I'm looking for, I resort to filtering. Maybe that's a clue for what confuses me. Also, I think I don't know in which mail accounts it is searching (everywhere or the current one)? And sometimes I _think_ it doesn't find things that are there and I find them differently.
AnonC 4y ago
I've been a long time Thunderbird user (except for the last few years). The global search feature was a good addition when it was launched, but it doesn't work very well and it doesn't seem like more effort was put into fixing/improving it. What I've observed is that using it to find specific emails may or may not work. I'm not talking about search performance but about the quality of results and the ability to narrow down. My mailbox was already a several GBs in size at that time.

defrost 4y ago

My only current grief with Thunderbird is minor. I recently circled about RSS feeds again and looked into "not Browser Addon" RSS clients - Feedbro as an extension is pretty good, has some shortcomings, and requires the browser to be left active 24/7 to catch ALL of a few of the feeds I follow. Thunderbird accepts RSS feeds but, for better or worse, is extremely strict about only accepting fully compliant RSS | ATOM spec verified feeds. There are a number of older "RSS feeds" that are compliant XML but missing a few recent feature fields - these work in Feedbro and other more accepting clients but fail in Thunderbird. It's a minor quibble, I should write a note to the devs I guess, but it did dash my idea of having the one email+RSS feed hub active 24|7.

mario_kart_snes 4y ago
I love Feedbro, but agree it's slightly unfortunate you have to run it in browser. Running Feedbro as standalone would be cool.

clircle 4y ago

Long Live Thunderbird

sph 4y ago
Eh it should just die so it can be born again. I feel it's glacial in its updates and unfocused. People that like its current iteration are OK with it, people that want a more modern email client have to wait 5 more years, but then it'll be 5 years out of date.

Klonoar 4y ago

Any reason that the Matrix blurb is the only one without a graphic attached? I'm curious to see how it looks. Edit: ah, there's an image here at least https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/thunderbird https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/thunderbird

preya2k 4y ago
I supposed they don't feel very confident about the UI. When I looked at the Nightly a couple of weeks ago, the UI experience inside tha Matrix features was horrible. I hope this has been fixed/will be fixed soon.
- eddieroger 4y ago
  I downloaded Thunderbird just to play with Matrix integration, and I think this is the right answer. The rest of the UI looks much more refreshed and new, and the Matrix window feels a lot closer to older IRC apps than anything else. Not that it's a problem, just an observation, but I would prefer it looks a little newer and fresher, personally.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Does the 'chat' space in the sidebar glow/flash/gain a number when you have an unread message that needs your attention?

drewzero1 4y ago

A few months ago I was tasked with switching our office from Gmail's web interface to Thunderbird and it's gone surprisingly well. Usually new software meets a lot of resistance and complaints from the staff, but I've heard mostly praise. I've been playing around with a testing version (beta? nightly? can't remember) and am very excited about the chat integration. I'm not sure if it will be useful in the office, which is small enough for people to just talk to one another, but it could come in handy in some circumstances where we'd normally use an email chain.

wanderingmind 4y ago
How do you handle calendar invites from thunderbird to include a google meet link?
- timwis 4y ago
  Fantastical can do this, so I assume/hope there’s a plug-in for it.
- drewzero1 4y ago
  We haven't tried... our office is small enough that we just use paper calendars, and rarely need to arrange meetings or other events beyond a few people.
- FastMonkey 4y ago
  That's kind of funny, our problem with Google calendar is that it keeps adding that when we don't want it!
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Paste in any just-thought-up Jitsi URL.
wonderbore 4y ago
> switching our office from Gmail's web interface to Thunderbird For what reason? Are they planning to leave Gmail? That’s just about the only reason for an office to mandate a specific UI for email.

lobocinza 4y ago

I've tried Thunderbird and Evolution a few times in the past and I'll will not be fooled again. The experience is always the same: clunky interface, sync issues and a lot of time wasted. With Thunderbird I had to install a few extensions just to have some that barely was a proper Mail/Contacts/Calendar integration. Nowadays I just run the default web app in Ferdium and use vdirsyncer to backup my mail and calendars to disk. And I use Evolution only because Gnome uses it for showing my events on the shell calendar. Like it or not Gmail (and Fastmail) interfaces are great and native PIM is dead.

seraphine 4y ago

Thunderbird is finally paying attention to the UI side of things. Hopefully they finally implement the standard multiline email list view which has been on the back burner for 19 years XD https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945

toomim 4y ago
Noooooo... The reason I switched to thunderbird is that it displays each email on a single line, which is sooooo much more information dense, and thus efficient! There's no better way to manage a large amount of email than displaying a large amount on screen!
- seraphine 4y ago
  Even if they add it, the single-line display will always be around. It isn't mutually exclusive by any means. All clients that support multiline also have single-line support.
  - toomim 4y ago
    Nope. Mail.app removed it long ago. iOS mail has never had it. Even gmail is less info-dense than it could be, as it routinely increases the padding and margins for each message, even with the most dense view.
teddyh 4y ago
A recent poster in that thread claims that multiline email list view is now implemented: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945#c214 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945#c214
- sph 4y ago
  It's been implemented in a fork, not in thunderbird.

bprasanna 4y ago

I really appreciate the Thunderbird development team for proactively going through the list of add-ons and reaching out to the add-on developers if there is any concern to be addressed before moving the add-ons to 102. I can feel the commitment to keep Thunderbird a great email client.

grilla001 4y ago

newsarchive88 4y ago

The beast is back...

rambambram 4y ago

Nice, I like Thunderbird! Can't wait to use the import/export wizard. I always thought it a little strange to install add-ons for this functionality. I'm also very curious to their Matrix support. I've heard about it, and maybe this move from Thunderbird makes it more accessible. Also, a reminder to self: donate some money to the Thunderbird development team.

bigpeopleareold 4y ago

I tried TB once a year or two ago - it was slow and the GUI was hard to read (maybe the same design worked on lower resolutions?) I completely forgot what I used in the 2000s, it could have been TB. A month ago, I gave it another shot. Not slow, GUI still hard to read, but at least there is a nice theme I found that now makes it usable ("Monterail Full Dark" is what I use). With that, I decided to stick with TB; it feels very comfortable and feels better than jumping into all the different webmail clients for various email addresses I have. I am curious to see what 102's UI re-design will bring.

anujkumars 4y ago

its bike or company.. please suggest

lproven 4y ago
It is neither. https://www.thunderbird.net/ https://www.thunderbird.net/

spacechild1 4y ago

Happy Thunderbird user here. Just wanted to say thanks!

endorphine 4y ago
Add me to the list! Thanks to the team working on Thunderbird!

m-ueberall 4y ago

If you're already using an older version of Thunderbird, be sure to first check https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/addon-compatibility-check/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/addon... (Addon Compatibility Check for TB 102) ...

linker3000 4y ago

Trying to use Thunderbird in the corporate world was frustrating - but just for two reasons: 1) Accepted recurring calendar events that started in the past would pop up reminders that could not be dismissed (they would just pop up again immediately). 2) Thunderbird had problems embedding meeting links in the calendar event (especially, if the meeting was rescheduled), so you'd have to go find the original meeting invite email. For those two reasons, I ended up installing Outlook to handle corporate stuff while TB took care of everything else. I see from the release notes that these two issues have been worked on so I'll have to see what happens when I re-add my corporate account again; it will be great if the calendar is fixed.

GRBurst 4y ago
Yeah, these things are not handled very well in TB. What you can do: For 1) You can configure TB to not show event notifications from the past For 2) Things improved at least a bit, so for me, this is usable now
- linker3000 4y ago
  I found that #1 occurred for all events as they rolled forwards, so, for example, if the event occurred every Wednesday and the first one was in January, I will get a popup for today's meeting, but I will not be able to dismiss it on TB - I'd have to use my phone to delete the current event once it had passed to stop the nagging.
  - heavenlyblue 4y ago
    Yeah, I had exactly the same issue.
- agilob 4y ago
  >You can configure TB to not show event notifications from the past How do I do that?

mdrzn 4y ago

I really can't stand how SLOW Thunderbird is, from starting the app to doing searches, to any action at all. Even with 32gb ram, i9-9900, SSDs.. sooooo slow.

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
i9 with 64gb of ram and a Samsung pro SSD. I have no issues. Either your mailbox is substantially bigger or your database is broken.
- mdrzn 4y ago
  I have the 16years old Gmail in it, so that must be the cause. Should I just delete the .db and let it rebuild? Would that fix/mitigate the issue?
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    I don’t know, please backup .Mozilla or whatever path it sits in before you experiment. Another use in this thread suggested deleting .db, but ymmv
cassianoleal 4y ago
MacBook Air M1, 16Gb RAM. Opening TB takes <2s and everything is snappy. Searches are very fast. I still find the UI and UX a bit clunky but performance has not been an issue for me.
timbit42 4y ago
Doing this will speed it up: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-datab...

dusted 4y ago

my knee jerk reaction is "oh god no why!?" but I guess I'll just keep using it because it's what I've always used..

teekert 4y ago

I love the new look, and Matrix, as far as I'm concerned is the only true alternative to Email with its fully open protocol, open source server and multitude of clients! Absolutely great move, and it looks great too! Now I can just tell family to use Thunderbird and they already have their first Matrix client, which they can install on mobile in a jiffy. It would be nice if it could make another dent in Whatsapp's monopoly (in my country). I just hope account creation is easy... Will check it out! Thanx TB team!

anony999 4y ago

This looks great! The only reason I didn't fully migrate to Thunderbird yet is the search feature which seems to be lacking in some areas compared with the mail.app

timbit42 4y ago
The search feature doesn't bother me because I never have to use it. My email is organized.
- anony999 4y ago
  If you run a business you need it (i.e. the accountant is asking you to resend invoice number xyz)

black_puppydog 4y ago

I took this as a reminder to finally set up Thunderbird for my work email. After figuring out that gmail login will only work with cookies being enabled in the setting I am super happy to finally have a sane folder & filtering interface. I'll probably stick with google's UI for the agendas for now, but overall this is being really smooth. Ironically, the search in thunderbird, while not perfect, is so much better than on gmail, where I often have trouble finding emails from half an hour ago, searching for the exact subject line. EDIT: and spam filtering! It's amazing how many really important emails gmail flagged as spam for me. Like, mails coming from colleagues on the same custom domain, as replies to emails I sent them. I really don't get why people use google's products, honestly. At this point it's just pure monopoly I guess, and increasingly network effects since the big providers don't play well with smaller ones.

heavenlyblue 4y ago
> out that gmail login will only work with cookies being enabled What are other options of having your web-based client log into your email?
- black_puppydog 4y ago
  I meant I have to enable cookies in Thunderbird to be able to log into my gmail account via oauth
  - ordinary 4y ago
    Only for the first time. Subsequent times work even with cookies disabled.
wizofaus 4y ago
And I thought outlook (live.com)'s spam filtering was bad. It just doesn't seem like it should be that hard of a problem to solve - there's almost no case as a human I can't instantly tell that an email is spam or not-spam and give a concrete reason why. E.g. almost any email that uses my real name in the greeting isn't spam, and certainly one that's a reply to an email I've sent, yet I've seen examples of both end up in junk folders. It's distinguishing important emails specifically written to me providing key info or requiring my response vs mass-email or automatically generated email that I would think is a harder problem, but live.com seems to do it moderately well. If Thunderbird does auto categorization well that'd be reason enough to try it out (but where does the categorization execute, if you're using it from multiple devices?)

mgaunard 4y ago

I stopped using Thunderbird with version 3 when all the new database indexing features made it very slow and unusable. Haven't tried it again since then.

nswest23 4y ago

Serious question: what is the point of an email client?

StuffMaster 4y ago
To use email.
timbit42 4y ago
More consistent user interface because web email user interfaces change regularly. Ability to read/reply if the internet is down or you are traveling outside of internet areas. Easier and faster to make backups of your email and contacts. More features than web email interfaces.

cycomanic 4y ago

I really wish muttator was still working. It was an extension which turned thunderbird into mutt with a GUI, in other words a keyboard driven email client without the hassle of dealing with calendars, HTML, images... of cli clients. Also unfortunately firenvim (an extension to use Neovim for textfields) is currently broken.

cutler 4y ago

Unusable Address Book. For me horizontal view is essential and now it's borked, ie. all email addresses lumped together as Email Addresses and the same for Phone Numbers and Addresses. How can this possibly be touted as an improvement? For me it's exactly the opposite. Columns are no longer resizable and the Notes section, which I rely on heavily, has been reduced in size YET AGAIN. Mozilla, there's an old adage - If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It. Switching back to 91 immediately and looking to disable updates.

pers0n 4y ago

I've been using Thunderbird for decades, nice to see color is back!

ruph123 4y ago

I really wish they would do away with tabs. Somehow this has always bothered me about TB. I don't know why. Maybe because it adds more layers in ehat should be a clean interface. Or maybe it is just tab-anxiety I have from using browsers. I just don't want to micro-manage tabs in my email client.

awinter-py 4y ago

recently tried to switch to desktop from web gmail -- logging into gmail with a client is terrifying and painful typing my google password into a random popup isn't exactly confidence inspiring -- neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented hard to set up threading, sync took forever before newest part of inbox was ready, unclear impact on how replies look IMO it's 2022 and the open niche for email clients is 'offramp from gmail' -- how can I get a temporary gmail-like experience on desktop w/out an overnight sync, without a giant security hole, and with minimal changed experience. Solve this and you can eventually migrate people to other email hosting.

apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
> neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented You can't have done that recently. Less Secure Apps was recently deprecated and removed. They've been actively discouraging using it for around 5 years. Thunderbird has supported the OAuth flow for Gmail since at least 2017 (I swear it's been there longer, but 2017 is the earliest reference I can find). It's used it as the default option when detecting Gmail since before COVID at least. It did promote the use of "Less Secure Apps" previously and that option was still available after the introduction of OAuth, but not as the default. I no longer use Thunderbird (I switched to Spark, which solved a number of issues I was experiencing with unread email counts), but it's been a pretty good experience for a long time. Especially if you have multiple email accounts from different providers.
- awinter-py 4y ago
  ah you're right, I created an app password -- didn't use less secure apps assumed they had just renamed it

wufocaculura 4y ago

So happy that thunderbird is still alive :) I like the new UI - seems a bit more compact than previous one - a nice chnage comparing to useless space wasted in most of the apps we have today. Hope they will focus on editor in the upcoming versions - if only they could make html tables as good as they are in Outlook...

nsxwolf 4y ago

I haven't looked at Thunderbird in over 10 years so I decided to download it. It was very easy to set up my Gmail account. My initial impression is that it is delightfully old-fashioned. It reminds me of the mail clients we used to use in the good old days - The list view has tiny fonts and is packed with all kinds of information. It isn't at all "slick" like Apple Mail or even Outlook. It feels clunky, like it's an ancient codebase that's been redesigned a million times. But it's charming.

jsilence 4y ago

Its all nice and dandy and I really appreciate that development of Thunderbird has awoken from its hiatus, but I really really wish they would fix the Maildir storage and make it standards compatible, so that one can use other mail tools like offlineimap (aka nbsync) or mu on the same Maildir store. Please let form follow function... Edit: some other user pointed out that Maildir support is on the roadmap: https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#maildir Great news!!

hammyhavoc 4y ago

Surprisingly impressive. Matrix integration is excellent, and loving the configurable UI modernizations, especially being able to simplify it in some areas. The least worst of current email clients, but there's always room for improvement, though email is never going to be glam to develop a client for. Now, if only I could sync accounts and configs between devices without a bodge of a workaround. That would be fantastic, especially with the new Android client.