Thunderbird makes email better for you, bringing together speed, privacy and the latest technologies. Focus on what matters and forget about complexity.
Is Thunderbird free?
Yes, Mozilla Thunderbird is free and open source. You can use it for personal and commercial use. However, Mozilla is open to donations in order to keep improving the app.
Does Thunderbird let users make a local copy of my messages?
Yes, Thunderbird will keep a copy of all your messages on your computer by default. You can also create a local backup of your messages or download them from your server whenever you need it.
Can Thunderbird replace Outlook?
For general email use, yes, Thunderbird can be a suitable replacement for Outlook. Those that require better integration with Microsoft Office and Exchange will be more satisfied with Microsoft Outlook. Additionally, Thunderbird's interface may not be as polished as Outlook's.
How many email accounts can I have with Thunderbird?
Thunderbird has no limitation on the number of email accounts users can add to the app.
What mail services does Thunderbird support?
Thunderbird supports most mailing services that synchronize items through the IMAP protocol or download messages through the POP3 protocol. The application also supports synchronization for MS Exchange and Outlook.com accounts. Thunderbird supports Gmail, iCloud, Outlook.com, IceWarp, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, GMX, Kerio and more.
Features
Mail Account Setup Wizard
Prior to this feature you had to know your IMAP, SMTP, and SSL/TLS settings. Now all you need to provide is your name, email address, and password and the email account set up wizardry will check our database and find the email settings for you.
Personalized Email Addresses
Ever dreamed of having a personalized email address (such as "[email protected]") for you, your family or your business? Thunderbird makes this easy - you can sign up for a new email address within Thunderbird, and it will all be set up automatically for you ready to send and receive.
One-click Address Book
One-click Address Book is a quick and easy way to add people to your address book. Add people by simply clicking on the star icon in the message you receive. Two clicks and you can add more details like a photo, birthday, and other contact information.
Attachment Reminder
The attachment reminder looks for the word attachment (and other words like file types) in the body of your message and reminds you to add an attachment before hitting send.
Multiple-channel chat
Enjoy real-time conversation with your contacts, right from your favorite messaging application, with multiple supported networks. Thunderbird makes it easy to search through both past conversations and received emails.
Tabbed Email
Thunderbird replicates the new look and feel of Mozilla Firefox in an effort to provide a similar user experience across all Mozilla software desktop or mobile and all platforms.
Tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. Tabs appear on the top of the menu bar providing a powerful visual experience and allowing the toolbars to be much more contextual.
Tabbed email lets you keep multiple emails open for easy reference. Double-clicking or hitting Enter on a mail message will open that message in a new tab.
When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between tabs.
Search the Web
You can now search the Web without having to leave Thunderbird. Type whatever comes to mind in Thunderbird's search box and choose from several different search providers.
You can also highlight words in your email, right click, and select "search the web for:" to start your Web search.
Quick Filter Toolbar
The Quick Filter Toolbar lets you filter your email faster. Start typing in words in the Quick Filter search box and the results are displayed instantly. Or you can filter your email by New Messages, Tags, and people in your Address Book. You can also "Pin" or save a Filter and use it across multiple folders.
Search Tools
The search interface in Thunderbird contains filtering and timeline tools to pinpoint the exact email you're looking for. Thunderbird also indexes all of your emails and chat conversations to help you search even faster. Your search results are displayed in a tab so you can easily switch back and forth to your search results and other email.
Message Archive
If you think you're going to need an email in the future but want it out of your inbox without deleting it, archive it! Archiving helps you manage your inbox and put your email into the archive folder system.
Selecting the Archive button or hitting the 'A' key will archive your email.
Activity Manager
Thunderbird version 91 is only offered as direct download from thunderbird.net and not as an upgrade from Thunderbird version 78 or earlier. A future release will provide updates from earlier versions.
What's New
Changes
- Support for Google Talk chat accounts removed
Fixes
- Thunderbird could crash on startup on Windows 11
- After compacting folders, new downloaded messages were inaccessible
- Marking a message as a Favorite (starred) did not update the thread pane when using Unified Folders
- Compose window failed to populate some fields when S/MIME was configured
- Non-text attachments has an incorrect "charset=windows-1250" mime header
- Messages sent as attachments incorrectly had an "X-Mozilla-Cloud-Part" header
- Improved Address Book import/export support in Profile Importer
- IMAP stability improvements
- Offline cache was unusable for NNTP accounts
- Signing S/MIME messages failed
- Various UI improvements
Previous Notes:
Thunderbird 102 is here! On behalf of the entire Thunderbird team, I'm thrilled to announce the availability of our major yearly release. Thunderbird 102 is loaded with highly-requested features, and we think you'll be delighted by them.
It features refreshed icons, color folders, and quality-of-life upgrades like the redesigned message header. It ushers in a brand new Address Book to bring you closer than ever to the people you communicate with. Plus useful new tools to help you manage your data, navigate the app faster, and boost your productivity. We're even bringing Matrix to the party!
The New Address Book In Thunderbird 102
We've teased a new address book in the past, and it's finally coming in Thunderbird 102. Not only does the refreshed design make it easier to navigate and interact with your contacts, but it also boasts new features to help you better understand who you're communicating with.
The new Address Book has compatibility with vCard specs, the defacto standard for saving contacts. If your app (like Google Contacts) or device (iPhone, Android) can export existing contacts into vCard format, Thunderbird can import them. And as you can see from the above screenshot, each contact card acts as a launchpad for messaging, email, or event creation involving that contact.
We're also adding several more fields to each contact entry, and they're displayed in a much better, clearer way than before. Your contacts are getting a serious upgrade in Thunderbird 102! There's so much more to share on this front, so please watch this blog for a standalone deep-dive on the new Address Book in the near future.
The Spaces Toolbar
One of the underlying themes of Thunderbird 102 is making the software easier to use, with smarter visual cues that can enhance your productivity. The new Spaces Toolbar is an easy, convenient way to move between all the different activities in the application. Such as managing your email, working with contacts via that awesome new address book, using the calendar and tasks functionality, chat, and even add-ons!
If you want to save screen real estate, the Spaces Toolbar can be dismissed, and you can instead navigate the different activities Thunderbird offers with the new pinned Spaces tab. (Pictured to the left of the tabs at the top). Pinned spaces tab showing the different activities, to the left of the tabs.
Link Preview Cards
Want to share a link with your friends or your colleagues, but do it with a bit more elegance? Our new Link Preview Cards do exactly that. When you paste a link into the compose window, we'll ask you (via a tooltip you can turn off) if you'd like to display a rich preview of the link. It's a great way for your recipient to see at a glance what they're clicking out to, and a nice way for your emails to have a bit more polish if desired!
Account Setup Hub In Thunderbird 102
In past releases, we have improved first-time account setup. When setting up an email, autodiscovery of calendars and address books works really well! But managing accounts and setting up additional accounts beyond your initial setup has lagged behind. We are updating that experience in Thunderbird 102.
Want to use Thunderbird without an email account? We know you exist, and we're making this much easier for you! After installing the software, from now on you'll be taken to the below account hub instead of being forced to set up a new mail account. You're free to configure Thunderbird in the order you choose, and only the elements you choose.
Import/Export Wizard
And that's a perfect segue into the brand new Import and Export tool. Moving accounts and data in and out of Thunderbird should be a breeze! Until now, you've had to use add-ons for this, but we're excited to share that this is now core functionality with Thunderbird 102. A step-by-step wizard will provide a guided experience for importing all that data that's important to you. Moving from Outlook, SeaMonkey, or another Thunderbird installation will be easier than ever.
We've also taken extra precautions to ensure that no data is accidentally duplicated in your profile after an import. To that end, none of the actions you choose are executed until the very last step in the process. As with the new Address Book, watch for a deeper dive into the new Import/Export tool in a future blog post.
Matrix Chat Support
We obviously love open source, which is one of the reasons why we've added support for the popular, decentralized chat protocol Matrix into Thunderbird 102. Those of you enjoying the Beta version know it's been an option since version 91, but it will finally be usable out-of-the-box in this new release. We're going to continuously develop updates to the Matrix experience, and we welcome your feedback.
Message Header Redesign
Another UX/Visual update can be seen in the redesign of the all-important message header. The refreshed design better highlights important info, making it more responsive and easier for you to navigate.
All of these improvements are gradual but confident steps toward the major release of Thunderbird 114 "Supernova" in 2023, which is set to deliver a completely modernized overhaul to the Thunderbird interface.
