Thunderbird for Android email client arrives in beta
Designed, developed and published by Mozilla, the Thunderbird email client is finally here for Android in the first beta release.
I am crossing my fingers that Mozilla doesn't completely break K-9 mail by forcing Thunderbird before feature parity, it's my favourite mobile mail client. I love using the volume keys to quickly scroll through inbox messages and mark them as read. (Other clients don't seem to mark read unless you stare at a message for 3 seconds)
I think Thunderbird has feature party with K9 though, at least from my quick comparison. Seems that this is just a rebranding and UI update to Material 3 (a welcome one), but they intent to develop and maintain both apps for the time being.
I think K9 is also moving to Material 3 (there's an identically versioned K9 Beta, I haven't tested it though).
The only changes to my knowledge for Thunderbird is branding and colors.
Thunderbird team has been developing K9 for years now. This step is a small iteration from a technical point, but significant in that they feel it is stable and complete enough to put their name on.
Thunderbird is technically part of Mozilla but as far as I can tell, they are funded and operate pretty much independently from the browser and other parts of the org.
I believe Thunderbird is K9's current beta, rebranded.
Is there any difference, currently? Aside from the logo, I can't see anything different from K-9 Mail.
One of the biggest draws is the ability to transfer from K-9 Mail to Thunderbird for Android
I literally just tried that, and it failed. LOL. Ended up setting up the account manually.
Edit: Also doesn't seem to have the push mail option like K-9 has. It does have push, it's just enabled very differently. Go into Folder Settings, select a folder (Inbox in my case), and then turn on "Enable Push". You may also need to grant it Alarms and Reminders permission manually on newer Android versions if it doesn't prompt for it.
I think material you?
More ambition, lol. The K9 Mail app now has backing by Mozilla
It is identical. They've said that they will continue to release them in parallel with different branding. This has to do with users' preferences, but also with certain downstream things like network trust and store requirements.
You have to export your settings from k9 and then import that file. Direct import didn't work for me as well.
I think some colors differ slightly ¯(ツ)/¯
Yeah I had to export it manually from K9 then it worked perfect
Can someone explain how to get push email to work? Mine will only fetch on a set interval, 15 minutes is the shortest option. Is it because I'm using a Gmail address?
See edits: Push is present and totally works; enabling it is just very different from K-9
On K-9 Mail, it's in Settings -> {Account} -> Fetching Mail -> Push Folders
On Thunderbird Beta, the "Push Folders" option should be in the same place, but it is totally missing for me.
Edit: If you go into Manage Folders and then Inbox (or any folder I guess), there is an "Enable Push" option. I enabled that, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Edit 2: Ok, the folder-level enable push seems to work now. I had to grant the Alarms and Reminders permission before it could run in the background. It didn't automatically get or prompt for that, but granting that in app settings fixed it
I have been using it and really enjoy it. I was using Nine and couldn't stand the way it handled folders and incoming mail.
Better experience in my opinion.
Does it have nature owa support?
The answer is no, unfortunately.
OWA is also an email client. How would a client support a client? A proprietary and web-based one at that.
No, it's a protocol from Microsoft. It's not free unfortunately. Android email clients like Gmail (yes, confusing) or Apple's client support it. It's important for work... I have to pay for a plugin to receive work email to thunderbird on Linux.
Partly solved my complex with foss mail clients being ugly designed