Thunderbird Support Forum

Is there a way to schedule a time (daily or weekly) during which Thunderbird doesn't check for new mail?

I have several mail accounts, some for work, some private. I want Thunderbird checking for new mail on my work accounts during my work hours, and pause checking when I get off work. I don't want Thunderbird to check my private mail while I'm at work (or specifically, up until an hour before the end of my workday).

Eg. I'd like to "tell" Thunderbird to check my work account monday to friday from 8am to 5pm, and my private account every workday from 4pm to 8am and every weekend all day. Ideally, clicking on "get new mail" would only fetch mail for the currently unpaused accounts.

I don't want to have to manually pause checking for messages for each account several times a day.

The "check for new messages every ___ minutes" doesn't help.

Disabling notifications isn't a solution - I need the messages (especially work messages) not to be downloaded from the server (or receive notification that there's mail waiting). I'm looking to "disconnect" from work while keeping up to speed with my private communications.

I've created a search folder to contain 'starred' emails but the folder doesn't show a badge count. Is this a setting somewhere or is it not supported?

tia webby

This topic was closed but the Bug was never fixed for Mac. The problem is, sometimes a spelling is correct as intended or not, depending upon its context in the email body. But the Spell Check Window covers that up as it blocks the middle of the email body.

It can't be moved in Thunderbird for Mac.

A previous post - now archived - suggested a left click on the (spell check?) window title area would allow moving the window. But that only works on ... Windows ... because it certainly does NOT work on a Mac. No click-drag, left or right, resulted in un-anchoring the spell check window from the center of the email body.

One example is when I used the word Add-ons. The spell check stopped at "ons", wanting to correct it to "one". If "ons" was by itself, I could see that. But I couldn't know that it referred to "ons" from Add-ons because the spell-check window covered that text.

Blocking remote content by default is a very positive security feature. But needing to add each and every email address individually is NOT optimum and wastes a lot of time. We really need a method to globally allow remote content from specified domains. For instance, it would be handy to allow remote content from any/all email from IBM, but I certainly don't want this for gmail.com addresses. This seems like a very simple improvement to code.

This has probably already been asked, but I can't find anything related to it. Ebay sends email from members that looks like "randomxyz@members.ebay.com". I would like to add the domain "members.email.com" so email from ANY member will be whitelisted and have remote content displayed. If this is possible, how do I set it up? Thanks in advance.

I'm looking for a message filter function that will wait a specified period of time before performing what the rest of the filter does whatever it is tasked to do. For instance, I want to have an incoming message sit in the inbox until it moves to a local folder some time later. This would allow me to see it from a device that can't see local folders (like a mobile phone). I can't find anything in extensions. Any thoughts?

I only wish to sort email only from known vs. unknown domain sources into different folders. Is there a method to filter messages from @AnyDomainName where the domain is NOT found in entries of my address book? Specifically, this method would ignore the Sender Name and only scrutinize the domain.

I've installed TBSync with Thunderbird and my O365 calendar is now syncing.

However, my email subfolders are not fully updating.

I have a # of subfolders I've created in O365 but they aren't appearing in TBSync in order to choose them to sync in Thunderbird. I am getting some (what I would call 'standard') subfolders in TBSync to choose such as Contact, Calendar, Tasks, and some other email accounts I have 'sync'd' into O365, but none of the actual email subfolders for the O365 account itself (i.e. 2024 Financials).

In Thunderbird, the only folders I see to sync (Synchronization & Storage > Advanced)are: Inbox, Draft, Sent, and Trash

What am I doing wrong or missing?

I often copy a link from web, then open Thunderbird to send that link. Thunderbird will not accept the 'paste' until I have gone back to the source, copied again and returned to the (now opened) Thunderbird. Annoying and inefficient! How can I get Thunderbird to allow 'paste' from my clipboard on the first try?

Thunderbird has destroyed itself by putting emails into threads starting some time in the last year. How do you stop this? I can't find important emails anymore by the date I sent them (hence becoming a needle in a haystack and actually might not even be visible). Why would anyone wish this on themselves? I even have situations where emails are in the browser, yet don't download into Thunderbird. It's a horrible problem. Hey Thunderbird programmers: If it ain't broke, don't fix it I say.

After last update of Thunderbird on my laptop I can no longer change start upp URL:, or uncheck "show startpage" That means evry time I star Thunderbird, I get the ask for more mony ! But on my PC it runs normal as it alwas have done.

The information on how to solve this dose not work ! It is like the inifile is locked. Mats

I recently had an issue where my email password changed on another client, but Thunderbird did not prompt me for a new password. After two days, my account was still frozen with no new emails on Thunderbird, although they were updating on other clients. The Mozilla help on the issue said to go to "Options." There is no "Options" option in my Thunderbird, not in the top menu, not under server settings, not under Account settings, not under Tools. My version of Thunderbird is 115.11.0 (64-bit), running on Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS. Maybe the issue of no "Options" option is specific to this particular incantation.

Here's what I did to force Thunderbird to prompt me for a new password. I selected "Server Settings" below the email address in the left pane. I changed the Server Name to one that is incorrect. When I migrated away from that textbox, Thunderbird raised a popup window that it had to restart. I let it restart, and when it came back up, it prompted me for a new password. I now input my correct password for the email address. It came back a few moments later that the password was incorrect, asking me to enter a new password. Well, it's the server URL that's incorrect, not the password. I cancelled the popup window, then changed the the server name back to the correct one. When I migrated away from that textbox, Thunderbird again raised a popup window that said it had to restart. I let it restart, and when it came back up, everything was fine, and my two days of undelivered emails came through immediately.

I hope this can help others who are bewildered by the lack of an "Options" option on their version of Thunderbird.

Thunderbird shows Hijri (Saudi Arabia Regional Date Format) no matter what Preference I choose in settings.

I've chosen the English (United States) Application Locale and restarted Thunderbird multiple times but in the header the date still shows in Hijri Format (1445-xx-xx). See attached images.

Am I missing something here? Couldn't find any clues in the config editor either. The version I have installed is the correct one (English US).

I us an M2 Mac. I like Thunderbird, but prefer the Betterbird card view. Is there any way I can replicate this in Thunderbird?

I have attached two screenshots - one Betterbird, the other Thunderbird. I much prefer the Betterbird look, without the card frames and with the blue message header.

You might well say 'use Betterbird then!'. The problem is that Betterbird is not available in a native Apple Silicon version, only Intel, and therefore runs in emulation mode. Thunderbird has a native Apple Silicon version.

Just two small changes. Remove the card frame and make the unread message header blue. Surely that's possible somehow in Thunderbird?

Related: https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3079875 I used to daily version 52, and this would allow you to in windows set it to show the new mail tray icon, but hide the normal tray icon.

Seems since the introduction of mail.biff, this was unified and it's no longer seperate entries in the windows Taskbar Settings -> Select which Icons appear on the taskbar menu. Attached image shows the 2 old entries, and the singular new one which is the same, unread notification or not in the tray icon. I can only select/deselect one thunderbird entry here, which just toggles if it's there at all or not.

I do not wish to see the normal tray icon. I wish for the tray icon to show in my tray bar when there's a new/unread message.

This seems to be a thing that was regressed and fixed in v68, and then became an issue again with biff's introduction in v91 forward?

Thanks for your time.