Thunderbird

Related articles

• Thunderbird/Enigmail
• Firefox

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source email, news, and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

Installation

Install the thunderbird package, with a language pack if required.

Other versions include:

• Thunderbird Beta — Cutting edge features with relatively-good stability.

https://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/channel/ || thunderbird-beta-bin^AUR

• Thunderbird Earlybird — Experience the newest innovations as they're developed (equivalent to an alpha and Firefox Aurora releases).

https://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/channel/ || thunderbird-earlybird^AUR

• Thunderbird Nightly — Experience the newest innovations with nightly releases (for those that want to work with breakages).

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central/ || thunderbird-nightly^AUR

A version overview, both past and future, can be read on the Mozilla wiki.

Securing

Considerations

Under some circumstances Thunderbird may send your system's (internal) IP address as reply to HELO/ELHO requesting SMTP servers. If you have concerns, please read this article. You might change this for Firefox, too.

If you want to hide Thunderbird for sending your system's User Agent string, create a new empty string entry general.useragent.override in the #Config Editor.

While Thunderbird disables email images by default, it enables HTML rendering which may expose IP address and location. Choose View > Message Body As > Plain Text to disable this.

JavaScript is disabled for message content but not RSS news feeds. To disable JavaScript for RSS set javascript.enabled to false in the #Config Editor.

Extensions

• Enigmail — Extension for writing and receiving email signed and/or encrypted with the OpenPGP standard.

https://www.enigmail.net || thunderbird-enigmail^AUR, thunderbird-enigmail-bin^AUR

• TorBirdy — Extension that configures Thunderbird to make connections over the Tor anonymity network

TorBirdy AMO ||

• FireTray — Adds a customizable system tray icon for Thunderbird

FireTray AMO ||

• Lightning — A calendar extension that brings Sunbird's functionality to Thunderbird, including CalDAV support.

Lightning AMO || thunderbird-lightning-bin^AUR

• SOGo Connector — Lets you sync address books via CardDAV

https://sogo.nu/download.html#/frontends || thunderbird-sogo-connector-bin^AUR

• Cardbook — A new addressbook for Thunderbird based on the CARDDav and VCARD standards.

Cardbook AMO ||

Tips and tricks

Config Editor

Thunderbird can be extensively configured in Edit > Preferences > Advanced > General > Config Editor.

Setting the default browser

Note: Since version 24 the network.protocol-handler.app.* keys have no effect and will not be able to set the default browser.

Thunderbird uses the default browser as defined by the system MIME settings. This is commonly modified by the Gnome Control Center (Gnome Control Center > Details > Default Applications > Web) (available in: gnome-control-center).

This can be overridden in the #Config Editor by searching for network.protocol-handler.warn-external.

If the following three are all set to false (default), turn them to true, and Thunderbird will ask you when clicking on links which application to use (remember to also check "Remember my choice for .. links").

network.protocol-handler.warn-external.ftp
network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http
network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https

Plain Text mode and font uniformity

Plain Text mode lets you view all your emails without HTML rendering and is available in View > Message Body As. This defaults to the Monospace font but the size is still inherited from original system fontconfig settings. The following example will overwrite this with Ubuntu Mono of 10 pixels (available in: ttf-ubuntu-font-family).

Remember to run fc-cache -fv to update system font cache. See Font configuration for more information.

~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="pattern">
    <test qual="any" name="family"><string>monospace</string></test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="same"><string>Ubuntu Mono</string></edit>
    <!-- For Thunderbird, lowering default font size to 10 for uniformity -->
    <edit name="pixelsize" mode="assign"><int>10</int></edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Webmail with Thunderbird

See upstream Wiki: Using webmail with your email client.

Migrate profile to another system

Tip: The ImportExportTools addon offers an option to export and import a profile folder.

Before you start with Importing or Exporting tasks, backup your complete ~/.thunderbird profile:

$ cp -R ~/.thunderbird /to/backup/folder/

With migration you just copy your current Thunderbird profile to another PC or a new Thunderbird installation:

1. Install Thunderbird on the target PC

2. Start Thunderbird without doing anything and quit it.

3. Go to your Backup folder of your old Thunderbird installation

4. Enter the backup profile folder:

$ cd /to/backup/folder/.thunderbird/<oldrandomnumber>.default/

5. Copy its content into the target profile folder ~/.thunderbird/<newrandomnumber>.default/

$ cp -R /to/backup/folder/.thunderbird/<oldrandomnumber>.default/* ~/.thunderbird/<newrandomnumber>.default/

Export + Import

Before you start with Importing or Exporting tasks, backup your complete ~/.thunderbird profile:

$ cp -R ~/.thunderbird /to/backup/folder/

If your accounts are broken or you want to join two different Thunderbird installations, you better install one Import and Export AddOn (eg. ImportExportTools AddOn) to both Thunderbird installations and following this just export and import all your data to the new installation.

Changing the default sorting order

Thunderbird (up to at least 31.4.0-1) sorts mail by date with the oldest on top without any threading. While this can be changed per folder, it is easier to set a sane default instead as described in this Superuser.com post.

Set these preferences in the #Config Editor:

mailnews.default_sort_order = 2 (descending)
mailnews.default_view_flags = 1 (Threaded view)

Maildir support

The default message store format is mbox. To enable the use of Maildir, see Mozilla wiki: Thunderbird/Maildir. You basically have to set the following preference in the #Config Editor:

mail.serverDefaultStoreContractID = @mozilla.org/msgstore/maildirstore;1

Some limitations up to at least 31.4.0-1: only the "tmp" and "cur" directories are supported. The "new" directory is completely ignored. The read state of mails are stored in a separate ".msf" file, so initially all local mail using Maildir will be marked as unread even when located in the "cur" directory.

Spell checking

Install hunspell and a hunspell language dictionary and restart Thunderbird.

See the Firefox article for how to set the default spell checking language.

Native notifications

Enable mail.biff.use_system_alert in the #Config Editor. This option means that extensions （such as Gnome Integration） are not needed for these newer versions of Thunderbird.

Troubleshooting

LDAP Segfault

An LDAP clash (Bugzilla#292127) arises on systems configured to use it to fetch user information. A possible workaround consists of renaming the conflicting bundled LDAP library.

Error: Incoming server already exists

It seems Thunderbird (v24) still has that bug which pops up with "Incoming server already exists" if you want to reinstall a previously deleted account with the same account data afterwards. Unfortunately, if you get this error you can now only clean reinstall Thunderbird:

1. Make a backup of your current profile:

$ cp -R ~/.thunderbird /to/backup/folder/

2. Export all you Accounts, Calendar and Feeds via an AddOn like it's written in Export section of this Wiki. 3. Uninstall your current Thunderbird installation

$ pacman -R thunderbird

4. Remove all your data by deleting your current Thunderbird folder rm -R ~/.thunderbird/.

5. Install Thunderbird again:

$ pacman -S thunderbird

6. Create your mail accounts, feeds and calenders (empty).

7. Install the ImportExportTools AddOn

8. Import all your data.

Thunderbird UI freezes when receiving a new message

If Thunderbird is configured to show an alert when a new message arrives, or at launch, the lack of a notification daemon may freeze the interface (white screen) for many seconds. You can solve this issue by disabling alerts or installing a notification server.