Betterbird Blog

After the preparations described in an earlier post, we've shipped Betterbird 140.3.1esr-bb12 today. Please refer to the Release Notes for the full details.

This release contains a lot of fixes for issues raised by our users in the last two weeks. The upstream Thunderbird release 140.3.1 also contains more fixes than usual. Six of those fixes had already shipped in Betterbird earlier.

Update a few hours later: There is no release without some sort of issue. We just got a report that native new mail alerts, so not system alerts, are displayed at the right corner of the right monitor in a dual-monitor when before they are displayed at the right corner of the left monitor.

Here's what happened: As stated in the Release Notes, we tried to mitigate random flashing of Betterbird-native new mail alert in top left corner of the screen. So after creating the window, we now move it "off-screen", but it may end up on a monitor to the right and finally at its corner. A picture says more than 1000 words: Some users may work around the issue by setting the preference mail.notification.show_on_app_screen. If you're affected, please let us know and we'll provide a solution.

Or you can try the latest build for Windows in English. Yes, how ironic, a "latest build" on the day of the release.

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.

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.