Mozilla Thunderbird is a free open source desktop email client that was first released in December 2004. The client nowadays includes email management options but also options to connect to newsgroups, subscribe to news feeds and use various chat protocols so that is is commonly referred as a messaging client nowadays.
Thunderbird manages each email address that you add in accounts, and provides you with a wizard that walks you through the setup process. The developers have added wizards for several popular email services such as Gmail, Hotmail and other online mail services to the client to make setup as easy as possible. For those services, only the email address and password are required to complete the setup.
Thunderbird supports the Pop3 and IMAP protcol, and the client’s manual account creation option makes sure that email accounts from all providers can be added to the client. It furthermore includes a junk filter, an extension system that is identical to the system that the Firefox web browser uses, and various o
Mozilla recently decided to lower the priority of Thunderbird development. While this does not mean the end of the client, it means that development will chuck along at a slower pace.
Please check out our Thunderbird news archive if you are interested in update news of earlier versions of the email program.
What's going to happen to the Thunderbird email client? This was one question that most users of the desktop program asked themselves when it was revealed that Mozilla wanted to drop the program. Mozilla's intention in cutting the ties to Thunderbird were mostly caused by a desire to free up resources, and to avoid having […]
Mozilla has released an update to the desktop email client Thunderbird that brings the version of the program to Thunderbird 45.0. It is a major update of the application which has been on life support ever since Mozilla decided to hand over development to the community in 2012 and use freed up resources for other […]
For years, Mozilla developed and maintained not only the Firefox web browser but also the Thunderbird email client. Both products were received well when they were first released and both managed to attract millions of users who use the products on a daily basis. Mozilla some time ago announced that it would remove staff from […]
The email client Thunderbird lacks options to sort the order of accounts in the email client directly. It is for instance not possible to reorder accounts in the client's main pane via drag and drop. We have covered add-ons in the past that allow you to reorder accounts and folders, but there is also a […]
Mozilla announced plans some time ago to integrate the calendar add-on Lightning natively in the Thunderbird email client. Lightning is without doubt the most popular calendar add-on for Thunderbird and in fact one of the most popular extensions for Thunderbird. The decision to ship Lightning natively with the email program moves it closer to the […]
Thunderbird's Quick Filter toolbar displays options to filter all messages of the current email folder in certain ways. It allows you to only display unread emails for instance, which can be very useful if the client shows unread mails but you cannot locate them in the folder which happens sometimes when senders use incorrect dates. […]
Thunderbird is the main email client that I use on all desktop systems. There are plenty of reasons for that, from full control over all emails to better privacy and options to load add-ons that improve the functionality of the client. One of the most popular add-ons for Thunderbird is the calendar extension Lightning. Thunderbird […]
I'm an avid user of the Thunderbird desktop email client and even though development has been put on a backburner by Mozilla, it is offering all the features that I require. What I like about it especially is the fact that I'm in full control of all emails. If you use an online service such […]
Whenever I forward emails in the Thunderbird email client all headers of that email are attached to it at the top. This means that the actual message is not displayed above the fold, and that recipients who receive the forwarded email need to scroll down to read it. This is far from ideal, and I […]
The Printing Tools extension for the Thunderbird email client improves how emails are printed on the system. If you print out emails regularly or just occasionally using Thunderbird, you know that you cannot really change what is being printed. While you can make a couple of modifications to the page mode and scale, there is […]
If you are using the Thunderbird email desktop client on your system, you may have noticed that it does not really reveal a lot about connections that it makes. While you do see when it is retrieving or sending emails, only the email address used for the operation is displayed, while connections to mail servers […]
There are not that many good free cross-platform desktop email clients left. If you would have to list them, it is almost certain that you would mention the Thunderbird program, as it fits the bill perfectly. Mozilla recently decided to move engineering resources away from Thunderbird for use in other projects such as Firefox OS […]
Mozilla releases a Thunderbird Stable and ESR version every six weeks just like it does for the Firefox web browser. While that makes sense for actively developed products that get new feature additions regularly, it does not really make a difference in regards to the Thunderbird email client anymore as it does not really receive […]
The Thunderbird email client had to take a back seat over at Mozilla when the organization decided to spend resources on other projects instead. While it is still maintained, for instance with regular security updates, there has not been any updates of note in recent time that added new features to the desktop email program. […]
When you copy text to the Windows clipboard, the formatting of said text is usually copied alongside the textual bits of information. When you paste the copied text into a rich text editor afterwards, you will notice that the formatting will be retained. It does not really matter if you paste it into Microsoft Word, […]
Improvements have been made in recent time to tackle what I call the attachment issue in emails. Mail servers limit the maximum size of emails, and every email that exceeds that size is bounced back to the sender. Many providers and programs have added cloud hosting solutions to their services that can be used to […]
