Thunderbird 60 and extensions support

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 24, 2018
Email, Thunderbird
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46

Thunderbird 60 will be the next major release of the desktop email program. It is a major release because Thunderbird is moved to a new Extended Support Release base (and as is Firefox when version 60 hits).

Thunderbird 60 comes with a refreshed user interface and plenty of other changes.  Thunderbird users who run extensions in the email client may face compatibility issues as Thunderbird uses a strict compatibility policy when it comes to extensions.

In plain English: any extension that is not explicitly compatible with Thunderbird 60 will be disabled. Attempts to install incompatible Thunderbird extensions are blocked and users get the "could not be installed because it is not compatible with Thunderbird" error message.

not compatible thunderbird 60

The change is disastrous for Thunderbird's extension ecosystem. If you check the first two pages of extensions that have the most users on the Thunderbird Add-ons site, you will find out that only eight of the 40 Thunderbird extensions with the most users are compatible at this point in time.

The situation is even worse for the top 40 add-ons with the highest ratings as only five of them are compatible with Thunderbird 60.

Tip: you can verify if your Thunderbird extensions are compatible by visiting the Add-ons site and searching for the extensions.

There is a way out, however, at this point in time. The Thunderbird development team added an option to opt-out of the strict extension compatible checking enforcement. While that does not necessarily mean that extensions will work if they are not listed as compatible, chance is good that they do if they have been updated recently.

thunderbird extensions enable

Here is what you need to do to flip the switch and disable strict extension version checking in the email client:

  1. Open Thunderbird if it is not open already.
  2. Tap on the Alt-key to display the menubar and select Tools > Options from the menu. Alternative: click on the new menu icon (the three horizontal bars) and select options when it opens.
  3. Switch to the Advanced tab.
  4. Click on the Config Editor button under General (it opens by default).
  5. Confirm that you will be careful.
  6. Search for extensions.strictCompatibility.
  7. Double-click on the preference.

A value of true (default) blocks extensions that are not explicitly listed as compatible with Thunderbird 60, a value of false disables the strict checking.

Thunderbird 60 is available as a beta version at the time of writing. You could install it on another machine or a virtual machine to test extensions that you require. The new version of the email client will be released on May 15, 2018 to the stable channel. Thunderbird 60 will be released a week after Firefox 60 which Mozilla plans to release on May 9, 2018.

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Thunderbird 60 and extensions support
Article Name
Thunderbird 60 and extensions support
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Thunderbird 60 users who run extensions in the email client may face compatibility issues as that version of Thunderbird will use a strict compatibility policy when it comes to extensions.
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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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