Betterbird Blog

Do you know which folders are shown in Thunderbird's "Recent" folder list? Well, in the context menu in version 140 that's been renamed to "Recent Destinations", so that could be a hint. The change was made in this bug.

This list appears in the context menu, but also in the Filter Rules Editor. Yes, the list contains folders into which messages have been moved recently, but only manually, not by filter. This is implemented via a folder property MRMTime, where MRM stands for "Most Recently Moved to Manually".

One user asked us why folders that were recently "used" or opened weren't in the "Recent" list, as it would make things a lot easier when defining new filters. We thought that was a valid arguments, and given that the "Quick Folder Move" add-on has used MRU for ages, we changed the behaviour in BB 140.3.1 to make the "Recent" list hold the most recently used folders.

But every change breaks someone's workflow. The first report we had was from someone who used the "Recent" list to move misclassified SPAM back to the Inbox. They only wanted to see their familiar move targets. The next report came from someone who really only wanted to see recent manual move destinations, instead of a very busy list that now records lots of folders.

To that add the fact that some don't think that the alphabetic order in that list is great, so they filed this bug.

BTW, the Thunderbird folks also considered making that change, but dropped the idea stating: ... by selecting a folder, it becomes "used". That means the "recent" context menu for a message entry will always include at least one entry (the current folder), and every folder being opened will be added. Since we have a limit of 25 folders in that menu, the folders used for actually moving or copying messages might no longer be listed.

FINAL VERDICT: We reverted the change but we're still using MRU folders in the Filter Editor. Try it here in English and German.

In this post we talked about the mishaps which have been common when preparing Thunderbird ESR releases, and version 140.4.0 ESR is no different. Not PhotoShop'ed, you can see it here. The red B's mean that the build failed. Sure, the Thunderbird folks will have another go to get it going, but this is this is already the second attempt, here is the first.

UPDATE: After fixing what is called "build bustage", they got the release built, but they made three mistakes, here listed in declining order of severity:

1. They are not using the correct changeset of the Mozilla base software. For version 140, Mozilla did another "build 2" to plug a security vulnerability.
2. One patch was backported incorrectly.
3. Finally, they pushed all the patches separately, hence increasing the server usage and CO₂ footprint.

But who cares about correctness as long as the donation money is flowing in.

The Thunderbird folks are somewhat unpredictable. For 140.3.0 they made their build on a Thursday to be release on Tuesday the following week. Today is Saturday, and they haven't done 140.3.1 yet which is due on Tuesday. Well, "due" is in the eye of the beholder, looks like the old "volunteer spirit" before 2020 with the motto "Ship when ready" is still alive, even with ~50 paid staff and a multi-million dollar turnover. Likely they'll do it on Monday in a hurry. They're already earmarked 12 bugs for backport to ESR 140, but the backport hasn't happened yet.

Meanwhile we've added more fixes to Betterbird, which will ship in 140.3.1, and which are already available in the "latest build" versions for users who want to try them out early. As always, the Release Notes have the full detail. Amongst the goodies, we're fixing a couple of regressions: disappearing linebreaks when editing mailcites, and OWL default accounts losing their default status. We're also brushing off a fix to the "Junk" button whose context sensitivity was lost in the 2023 Supernova-Kaboom. The Thunderbird folks walked away from a 95% complete solution in February 2025.

After the preparations described in an earlier post, we've shipped Betterbird 140.3.0esr-bb11 today. Fingers crossed that there will be no issues which would make a replacing the release necessary^*). Please refer to the Release Notes for the full details.

Expert tip: You can always follow the Mozilla/Thunderbird ESR release schedule, which we mostly follow.

As of today, the 128 series has reached its end-of-life status. The 115 series hasn't been supported since February 2025, although some folks still use it as the last version that will run on Windows 7.

*): Update: there weren't. For the previous release 140.2.1, we did a "build2", not because the initial build had an issue, but to squeeze in another bugfix after the initial release.

Just for the information of the blog visitors.

Hello followers of the alternative Thunderbird mailing list!

Remember the list of 13 points sent in July 2024? Let's see what happened to them in TB 140 ESR:

1. Menu on top (*) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1842493 - Open https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D183466 Quote: decided to make it possible to move the menubar inside the unified toolbar.
2. API for custom message list columns https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1615801 - Officially postponed
3. No Linux Movemail (*) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1802145 - Open
4. No Linux system tray support (*) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1942125 and six friends - Open
5. Account colours (*) Rather deficient implementation, you can now colour the server folder icon, and there is some indicator in the compose window. Nothing in the message list.
6. Global message database - Promised for May (which year was it?) - Open
7. Quick Filter still appearing slow, lacking feedback: Some poor solution implemented (*)

So of the 13 items, 7 are still open or the Thunderbird implementation is not sufficient.

As always, (*) means that this works (better) in Betterbird.

Instead of addressing long-standing deficiencies, the TB folks have released a new regression-bugged "Account Hub", most notable regression https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1975860 (disabled in Betterbird). This is the second re-implementation of account creation, the first reimplementation shipped in TB 78 (https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/78.0/releasenotes/). So that got re-implemented after five years, whereas many features have been missing or broken for 20 years.

Some resources are dedicated to re-writing Calendar code https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/planning/T97ab9d114e5cb10e-M065844f04535ba1cd8cdaac2, others to implementing access to MS Exchange servers via EWS. That might be ready to go in the next ESR release, TB 153, in mid-2026 just a few months before Microsoft will phase out EWS in October 2026.

Looking at the account hub and calendar implementation, one gets the impression that glossy changes are favoured over real functionality improvements.

Thanks for reading, Jörg.

Thunderbird ESR releases (we don't watch their beta or release channels) are always a little drama of trial and error. This time their first build has some linting issues (the orange ES) and shows consistent test failures on all platforms (the orange bct7). No, this hasn't been PhotoShop'ed, you can see it here.

Today we made the first build of BB 140.3.0esr-bb11.

Featured fixes are:

• When a master password is used and the prompt is cancelled, the application will now be closed instead of prompting over and over. We picked up a complaint from a newsgroup. It fixes a bug that is six years old (from 2019) which hasn't seen any activity for two years (2023). It's only got 40 duplicates. Fun fact: The fix we're shipping is based on TB's own suggestion which they never completed.
• We got a few reports that calendar reminders didn't work reliably any more. After some investigations, we found out that the Thunderbird folks had fatally changed the default value of Show missed reminders for writable calendars, which led a reminders for future events not to be displayed if the application wasn't running at the time of the reminder, potentially leading to missed events. Their intention was to skip reminders for past events by default, but they threw out the baby with the bathwater. We fixed it by always showing reminders for future events, regardless of the setting.
• We were contacted by some heavy PGP users reporting that when importing public keys in bulk, the info panel didn't fit onto the screen and had no scrollbars. At times the oversized panel even led to crashes. We fixed it.

As always, the full details are in the Release Notes.