Betterbird Blog

We've shipped Betterbird 153.5.0esr-bb11 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for full details.

Thunderbird has plenty of regressions, so we allowed ourselves to have one, too 😛. While fixing the Searching... feedback in the status bar when the Quick Search had finish, we broke most of the other status bar feedback in the previous version 153.4.0-bb10. This was quickly fixed in a "latest build", and now is repaired in this release.

Other fixes in this release are minor:

We fixed an annoying bug where compose auto-save moved the caret from subject to body or vice versa under certain circumstances.

On Linux we fixed an annoying graphic artefact ("phantom shadow") when restoring from "minimised to tray" using Wayland.

We've shipped Betterbird 153.4.0esr-bb10 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for full details.

The most visible change in this version is the new context menu on the system tray icon for both Windows and Linux that allows closing the application. It's particularly useful for people using the "close to tray feature".

Other fixes worth mentioning:

• Most importantly, the Tags folder view mode was made to work correctly. This had mostly been neglected after it first shipped in Thunderbird 115 Supernova.
• We fixed and annoying Gloda constraint error logged in the console. Equally we fixed a console error reporting missing localisation resources when language packs were used.
• Plaintext and news users will appreciate that newlines no longer disappear at random while editing quotes.

Release drama is nothing new to the gentle reader, see these posts: [1] and [2]. Here it goes again.

In the post picture you can see how the 11th attempt to build Thunderbird 153.4.0 ESR looks like. Orange test failures, pointing to and mismatch with the upstream Mozilla platform code: Not enough arguments [nsICookieManager.countCookiesFromHost]" nsresult: "0x80570001 (NS_ERROR_XPC_NOT_ENOUGH_ARGS)

Additionally, in this build the Thunderbird folks didn't pin against the Mozilla platform code. That means it's a random non-reproducible build.

The first 10 attempts were complete failures as the picture shows. Red "B"s indicating failure to build the binary package. Paid professionals at work. Can it get worse? It wouldn't be a surprise if our Betterbird 153.4.0 ESR release were delayed yet again.

We've shipped Betterbird 153.3.0esr-bb9 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for full details.

In this release, a few issues were fixed for Linux users:

• The main application window will now be restored to its previous position after the next start.
• hyprland and Cinnamon are not officially supported for "minimise to tray".
• Maximised windows will be restored correctly when "minimised to tray".
• High CPU load on X11 system when Betterbird was "minimised to tray". We fixed a bug in the Mozilla platform code to achieve this.

All platforms benefit from the following fixes:

• When using POP accounts, working offline was interrupted by constant "could not connect" error notifications.
• When saving a sent message to a local Sent folder failed, Retry and saving to an alternative location also failed.
• Minor fixes: Folder name not shown correctly in Windows system notification. Most Recent + Alphabetical folder list not sorted correctly. Window control buttons (minimise, maximise, close) missing when menu bar and windows system title bar were hidden.

Thunderbird 153.3.0 is due on 15st September 2026, but the Thunderbird folks had an issue building it. They basically messed up some important backports, so it needed some intervention to get them back on track. Sounds familiar?

We depend on a correct Thunderbird build, so Betterbird is also delayed. At time of writing, 15th September 2026, 22:53 Middle European Daylight Saving time, the Thunderbird folks are still building their release.

We've shipped Betterbird 153.2.0esr-bb8 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for full details.

In this release, a few issues were fixed for Linux users:

• For some users, the system integration dialogue came up on every start. This should be fixed now.
• Due to the switch to a newer version of the library for Linux system tray support in 153.1.0-bb7, support for the Mate desktop had been lost. This was re-implemented now. Mate doesn't support the StatusNotifierItem (SNI) D-Bus protocol, hence we implemented a fallback to GtkStatusIcon. Desktops with don't support SNI can now be listed in the new preference mail.systemTrayNoSniSupport. On the Cinnamon desktop, the XApp Status applet for SNI support is generally installed, so the system tray icon works. If it's not present, x-cinnamon can be added to the preference. See our expert tips for details.
• Launching Betterbird again while an instance is already running and minimised to the system tray, will now restore the last main window. This matches the behaviour on Windows.

All platforms benefit from the following fixes:

The checkbox for matching display names and nicknames from the address book in a Quick Filter search didn't work. This was due to some changes in the Mozilla platform between versions 140 and 153 and has been corrected.

Some users got confused with respect to the location of folders for templates and archives, as their location wasn't correctly reflected in the UI in the Account Manager. As a consequence, Reply with Template was sometimes not available in the Filter Editor. Now the settings displayed in the Account Manager are accurate, also when IMAP namespaces are used, that is, all folders are, for example, located in an INBOX folder.

Lastly, more restrictive security settings in the Mozilla platform has malfunction of a few WebExtension Experiment add-ons as a consequence. New versions of popular add-ons like Lightning Calendar Tabs, ThunderHTMLedit and Sender Frequency have been made available and should be updated (semi-)automatically.

Noteworthy other affected add-ons: tbkeys-lite was updated on 31st August 2026 after receiving a hint from us, ImportExportTools NG and PrintingTools NG are not working at time of writing (2nd September 2026). However, the author has already submitted fixed versions to ATN, but they haven't been reviewed and released yet.

We've shipped Betterbird 153.1.0esr-bb7 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for full details.

As announced yesterday, we're retiring the 140 series effective immediately.

Noteworthy changes between 153.0 and 153.1.0:

• On Linux, we upgraded the library that handles the system tray to the latest version. This fixes a related crash.
• Unlike in Thunderbird, dragging an image around in a compose window or to a different compose window works.
• We fixed a puzzling bug where new messages prematurely lost their indicator star.

As already mentioned in this article, the 153 series brings interesting new functionality, for example, the ability to store message (.eml) attachments directly in a folder, close to tray, Quick Look preview of attachments on Mac, and improvements to account colours.

A quick note about "close to tray" which in Thunderbird replaced "minimise to tray". Now users are asking for both to be available, which has always been the case in Betterbird.

We're also shipping 66 (!!) fixes the Thunderbird folks are not including their 153 ESR release (yet?). Apparently they want to lure users onto the release channel to get those fixes, but that's a roller coaster ride of regressions.

Today we shipped the first version in the new 153 ESR series, Betterbird 153.0esr-bb6. At the moment, this is only available for Windows, in a few days, we'll offer binaries for for Linux and Mac. We'll see how stable this series turns out to be and when we will start promoting it as the new primary version superseding version 140.

We've analysed available bug fixes for Thunderbird carefully and we're shipping 32 fixes and features that the Thunderbird folks are so far not including in their 153 ESR series.

On top of the 32 extra fixes and features, Betterbird has another 220 improvements. We're happy to report that we just concluded an AI review of all patches and address the minor issues found before this release. Of course the current 140 ESR series will also be updated when 140.13.0 ships in the next few days, whenever the Thunderbird folks are ready.

Like always, everything is documented in the Release Notes.

Today we shipped the last version in this year's beta program, Betterbird 153.0b9-bb5. We only shipped five beta versions, while the Thunderbird folks shipped nine versions, some with little or no relevant content, for example their releases revolving around there Thundermail system add-on which is disabled via a preference in Betterbird.

Next week we will ship Betterbird 153 ESR, first for Windows and in due course for Linux and Mac. We'll see how stable this series turns out to be and when we will start promoting it as the new primary version superseding version 140.

True to our motto

Betterbird is better than Thunderbird in three ways: It contains new features exclusive to Betterbird, it contains bug fixes exclusive to Betterbird and it contains fixes that Thunderbird may ship at a later stage

we are currently shipping 26 27 fixes the Thunderbird release team hasn't included in the 153 series, and which are only available on the Daily (alpha) channel, and months down the track, also on Thunderbird's regression-ridden release channel.

These 26 27 fixes include interesting new functionality, like the ability to store message (.eml) attachments directly in a folder, close to tray, Quick Look preview of attachments on Mac, various functional fixes, and also fixes for five more or less rare crashes.

Update: The Thunderbird folks decided to spin another beta, 153.0 beta 10, just to include one more fix, so Betterbird is now only 26 fixes ahead.

The Thunderbird folks integrated the add-on Close to tray while at the same time dropping the minimise to tray function.

We restored the latter. The article screenshot shows the relevant UI in the settings. And of course it works on Linux, too, where as Thunderbird users have been waiting since 2020, and now, the Windows version doesn't even support minimise to tray any more.

These are the relevant preferences:

• mail.minimizeToTray
• mail.closeToTray
• mail.startupMinimized (in Thunderbird: mail.closeToTray.startInTray)