Thunderbird: a Free, Open Source, and Powerful Email Client

My desktop email program of choice.

Big disadvantage of this is you can't see your sent items on mobile device.

They have made some horrendous UI changes recently - another software ruined

An easy way to go to your profile directory is to click on the Application menu (hamburger menu) > Help > Troubleshooting information > About:Profiles (a link towards the bottom of the page).
This will show a button to open the directory in your file browser.

Another great way to sort is to use Thunderbird's powerful tag system The tags are coloured and can be seen on the email headers and clicking on the tag in the tag list shows only emails with that tag. You can create filters to automatically tag emails based on the email content.
I have completely stopped using a customised folder structure because the tags are so good

Thunderbird is based on the Firefox browser and has many addons to enhance functionality.
It also has an excellent integral PDF reader

It's extremely good at many things and maddening on a few. Empty Junk & Empty Trash are wonderful. The Window to find your Attachment snaps full screen is very irritating.
It imported all my Contacts from iCloud, Google, Outlook... Using Splashtop helps a lot. I can access my email on Thunderbird from my other workstations with nothing business oriented on anyone's Cloud.
RCL

thunderbird is the first piece of software i remove after fresh installing a distro that has it. top of my remove list.

I've been using Thunderbird for years and I USED TO LOVE IT. Now I'm starting to hate it. They can't leave well enough alone they are always "upgrading". They always change the interface and it gets more confusing every time they do this. It was very frustrating figuring how to get it to write an email after the last change. Why did they ruin a great thing?

Hi Leo, really informative videos you got. I hope to get some help from you regarding Thunderbird. I have aliases (additional emals) in my primary Outlook email. Outlook offers upto 6 additional alias emails which can be deleted and new ones created. It's a great feature if you want to use a proper email but also have the option to completely delete it.

With Thunderbird, I am not able to send emails using these alias emails. Please help.

Does this link to iPads and iPhone too

lol @ powerful. Thunderbird is one of those pieces of software used only by the most eccentric of people.

I've been using Thunderbird for many years, but the new UI is f'ing disgusting. Anyone have a fix to make it usable again?

I also use thecalendar. It is very easy to add calendars to it, like gmail, olidays around the word, protoncalendar and others. For email, I have my ISP email, gmail, proton maila and hotmail accounts

Ive been watching your videos for a few decades. If i remember correctly it was a cnet video i watched (a long time ago).
Was very happy to see you again recently. At first I wondered if you were the same Leo. But soon realized that time has passed for all of us. Glad we are all alive and healthy.

Now onto my question. Does Thunderbird also save attachments? I like that it can be opened with notepad without being a proprietary format. Just wondered if attachments also can be preserved. Thanks!

Do they have a very good android app?

Wholeheartedly agree. Have used it for more than ten years now.

I think it's horrible for forwarding emails it sends a whole load of crap along with the original email

I have been using TB since its beginning in 2003 and never regretted it for a single minute. I just hate using Outlook at work. I use it for the exact same reason as you, Leo. TB filter function is simple, easy, and works flawlessly. Also you can enhance TB with many plugins, free or paid, my favourite being QuickFolders, Quicktext.

One subject you did not touch upon in this video: Some people here made already comments that they use TB for multiple accounts. Also for me the easy handling of a number of mailaccounts with different mail adresses is a very strong point in favour of TB.

can it be integrated with gmail?

I migrated from Windows Live Mail to Thunderbird (yes, that long ago) so that I could set up and use contact groups, which Live didn’t have. Never had any reason to consider changing away from Thunderbird.

Glad that you mentioned that TB is platform agnostic. Works just as well in MacOS as Windows. Despite all the prognosticators talking about the demise of TB, it has been rejuvenated and better than ever. Some may view its UI as busy, but it seems so much easier to sort and search and display than newer email clients.

My inbox is archived into about 100 folders with multiple subfolders. Is there a way to sort all subfolder e-mails with most recent-on-top for each subfolder at once? Thunderbird default sorting is the older on top and I must go into each folder to reverse sorting. Thanks a lot!

I'd agree that Thunderbird can be really useful.

Last year my Gmail space was nearly full, and I wanted to clear it out. I had about 16 years worth of mail, and of course, most of it was junk.

However, there were occasions where I wanted to retrieve some info from old emails. So I did not want simply to bulk-delete all emails before a recent date.

Instead, I downloaded the relevant Gmail account message in mbox format, and used Thunderbird to access that stuff if I needed it. And now I keep a copy of all mail as a fallback in case my Internet is unavailable or something should happen to my online mail accounts in Thunderbird, even though I usually use mobile clients or webmail.

Love Thunderbird, have been using it for years.

I use Thunderbird. After messing about with MS Outlook, Thunderbird is brilliant.

I have been using Thunderbird for 22 years. It is superb and a programme I happily send donations to. Easily the best email client.

I tried using Thunderbird. Logged in to Gmail and Outlook accounts. While transferring Gmail mails to outlook, outlook server was disconnected so many times that I got frustrated. Only 40% mails were actually transferred. This happened again and again. What is the solution?

Leo, Great video as always, so thank you.

Thunderbird is a program I have used since it was first available. It is wonderful and does everything I ask for. I have 5 email accounts that I access through it and it works flawlessly. The current version provides all kinds of options that you do not get with other email clients. I can create special local folders with any name I wish and simply drag and drop emails into them to be able to archive (or at least store them for a long time for later reference). There are also a lot an add-ins available for it as well.
The calendar menu is very handy and can provide access to just about any calendar format available.

What it is missing is a solid way to back things up. I use two different back up program, both are free. These backs permit me to , if required, reinstall Windows completely, and then using the backup, fully recreate all of my Thunderbird data, so that when I open it up, it looks just like it did before I had to reinstall Windows.

Perhaps you can address this weakness.

I have imported my account in TB (imap acc). In this account, there are several folders which I created myself. When importing the acc in TB, these folders are not imported in TB. I can create these folders in TB (local folders), but how can I import or copy the mails into these folders. Is there a way ?
Or have I done something wrong at the beginning and the best thing to do is to start all over again ? Tnx.

Been using Thunderbird here for many years. Hard to bat. I also use it's calendar and it syncs with my Apple iPhone calendar.
Other than Outlook which is expensive, Thunderbird has all the functions one could wish for.

I discovered, and have used Thunderbird, since Microsoft ditched Outlook Express.

Last update stopped moving of local folders.

I have been using thunderbird for a long time, more than a decade. I have been very pleased with the email client. But I have had several serious problems with the calendar. A few years ago mozilla sent an update that wiped out my entire calendar.None of the technicians I found on line were able to fix it./ I had to recreate my calendar from memory. After I got this done I found that they did away with the notifications based on the calendar. It appears they tried to switched to using Windows notifications; very rarely I will get a notification ,. I much prefer the way Thunderbird notified me before.

Thanks Leo. For years, Thunderbird has been the best for reviewing all my domain email accounts using POP settings on my computer. Plus it's a free program. I've viewed several paid email prograns and they don't have many features that Thunderbird has.

My goto client on Windows too.

I've used it for many years as have my clients. I wish they'd go back to the way it looked and worked 5 years ago. I hate their automatic update because they can't leave it alone. Now I use Outlook since I have a Microsoft365 subscription..

Way back when I used Eudora for my desktop email program. But when Qualcomm stopped supporting it I needed something else. I switched to Thunderbird after I became aware of it when I was contracting to a local university and found their IT department using it. I’ve never looked back. Best email software out there.

A Great program. When I was at university it was great for saving all my correspondance. One of which saved me having to take a course.

Another great video, Leo. Thank you! I've used Thunderbird in the past and the ONLY reason I stuck with the desktop version of Outlook is because it's part of the Office 2019 suite and has amazing autocorrect and autofill functions that I have never seen anywhere else. MS did a lot of things wrong and plain annoying, but the two things they got right were these two functions. If Thunderbird had them, I'd drop Outlook in a heartbeat. Perhaps, there's a third party extension that is just as good that can be added to Thunderbird?

A few years ago I migrated both Firefox&Thunderbird from a Windows laptop to a Linux Minipc; this went very smoothly...I only had to change a path in the profile.ini to the Linux-path...started Thunderbird and voila....everything was there and new mails were coming in.

Great to see a new vid for this great client. There are many vids out there, but all with old versions of Thunderbird, so thank you! I've been using Thunderbird for many years and would be lost without it. I have 7 email account of varying types and domains, and Thunderbird works with them all! If anything, its over rich with functions.

I've used it for many years. Easily the best email client out there.

Thanks! This video came at a perfect time for us! Outlook had just deleted some of our emails, so we have lost faith in it and are looking for a new way to manage our emails (and have archived copies on our own computer). We had just started setting up Thunderbird when your video dropped! So am I right in thinking that we need to drag the inbox folders into the 'local' folder in order to make an actual true archive that has no risk of being deleted?

It's real easy to configure Gmail and outlook/Hotmail accounts in Thunderbird. Thunderbird is made by the same company that makes Mozilla Firefox web browser. It's better than the mail app that comes with Windows 10/11

i dont use it i use outlook and gmail web browsers email only here infact been using hotmail since 1998 here