Thunderbird has actually come back to Mozilla around 2017: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-hom...

And has been operating as a fully fledged subsidiary of the foundation since 2020: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

This is a known issue (tracked at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2007074, as mentioned by a previous comment). A fix has landed in Thunderbird Daily a couple of weeks ago, and should be released in Thunderbird 154 which comes out next month.

Hmm strange, I have never had a thunderbird folder in my home dir. I use thunderbird on Mac, Windows and Linux (Ubuntu).

Is this is the snap version of tb? If so it has restricted file access.

Maybe try the .deb version? (maybe need to back up your data in ~/snap/thunderbird/

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If only there was a way to edit the source code, and recompile it yourself.

Oh well, no software is perfect.

Thunderbird supports threading in the message list pane (which displays replies next to the email that was replied to), but a conversation mode for the message pane is still in development:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/true-threaded-conversat...

In the meantime, the Thunderbird Conversations add-on provides a conversation view that looks like classic Gmail, which is probably what you're looking for:

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail...

It’s been there for a while https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-threading-thund...

Create a virtual folder (saved search) that includes all messages from sent and inbox. Enable threading, and you will have conversations.

If I were one of those 10 people I'd have told them that I love "dated" UIs. Most modern UIs are trash. I'd hate it if efforts to make Thunderbird shiny enough to attract users sacrificed functionality, ease of use, or customization.

The post is vibe-slop, prompted by non-technical PM who viewed the task as a chore.

The tone with which it manages to objectify the users and distance the writer from them is a cherry on top.

Search does miss a lot of stuff. I hope they never get rid of the option for storing messages in MBOX because I find I have to grep through my messages all the time.

Which UX problems? When I read

> Thunderbird’s robust functionality is its superpower, but a dated interface shouldn’t be a barrier to entry for newer users.

I started preparing for the worst.

Search doesn't work on mobile for me at all. On Desktop, I always have to fiddle with filters to find the message I want.

> I.e. a low memory solution so you can leave it going and only open the client for actual interactions. Thunderbird is pretty bloated to leave open all day and sending and receiving shouldn't need a web browser attached.

I agree with you. Having my mail client still use ~800MB of memory when in the tray is not great (and I have very few emails, so one cannot blame the index or whatever).

Unfortunately since Thunderbird's IMAP stack was recently (a few years ago) rewritten in javascript (from C++), it's now dependant on the web stack to receive and send emails. I doubt firefox/thunderbird is engineered in a way that you could unload only the html rendering part on demand.

So I doubt we'll ever have our wish granted...

Tray implementations are actually on the horizon - recently taking shape with the help of community developers. For example Bug 2023000 - Implement Linux system tray: hide-to-tray

Fwiw, even just going through your software with one user can give quite a few insights about what's not obvious about it. That's not at all to say you never need more, but very few open source projects do user research in the first place, being passion projects that just scratch the developer's/s' itch. More samples is always better, definitely at n=10, but I'd also not dismiss the results and benefits of doing it!

> Is only 10 people representative of the population of thunderbird users?

For very narrow studies it is possible to get representative data with fewer than a dozen interviews, but in this case it is explicitly not representative. In the video they mention that most of the participants have used Thunderbird for over a decade and follow release notes, development, and various forums closely, which to me suggests that they were recruited opportunistically rather than a random statistical sampling.

They do mention that they have plans to engage a larger audience in the future but that can be incredibly expensive. Even large organizations typically have to augment a small number of representative interviews with a large number of surveys and a very large set of user telemetry to properly weight interview feedback.

It's a standard research technique. You can have 2,000 people answer an automated survey but you can't have hour-long conversations with them. Researchers in many fields would like a better solution for in-depth interviews.

Thunderbird has as many as 10 users?!

(I jest!)

It's funny you should say that, because the next release apparently directly addresses this. Including startup to tray. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/close-tray-starting-154

Why is that even something an app would support? The desktop should handle that.

U2F does not support PINs. You may be thinking of FIDO2, which does.

What's planned for upcoming versions of Thunderbird are in public roadmaps:

https://roadmaps.thunderbird.net/en-US/

Those two images in the post do look... "AI-enabled"

Thunderbird has spun off from the usual Mozilla stuff. I would be shocked if they moved in this direction.