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Thunderbird for Android / K-9 Mail: February Progress Report

19 responses

While K-9 Mail is developed in the open, following its development on GitHub can be somewhat tedious for a casual observer. So we’re trying something new and summarizing the most notable things that happened in the past month as we head down the road to Thunderbird for Android.

If you missed the exciting news last summer, K-9 Mail is now part of the Thunderbird family, and we’re working steadily on transforming it into Thunderbird for Android. If you want to learn more, check out the Android roadmap, this blog post, and this FAQ.

New Full-Time Developer 🎉

As already announced on Mastodon, in February Wolf Montwé joined the team. He is working full-time on K-9 Mail development.

What We’ve Been Working On

Message view redesign

In July 2022 ByteHamster proposed a change to the message view header. cketti’s decision to take a more holistic approach sent us on a months-long journey redesigning this screen in close cooperation with the Thunderbird design team. A first version finally shipped with K-9 Mail v6.505 (beta) at the start of February. The UI has since been refined based on user feedback.

Refreshed Message View
Message Details

The next stable release will most likely ship with what is included in the latest beta version. But during our design sessions we’ve looked at many other improvements, e.g. selecting which remote images to load (or not load), attachment handling, and more. So expect smaller updates to this screen in the future.

Message list

We started making small changes to the message list screen. It’s mostly about text alignment and whitespace. But we’ve also enlarged the click areas for the contact image and the star. That should make it much less likely that you accidentally open a message when you meant to select or star it.

We also added three different message list density settings: compact, default, relaxed.

Message List Density Settings
Compact Message List Density
Default Message List Density
Relaxed Message List Density

A first version of these changes can be found in K-9 Mail v6.509 (beta). We’re looking forward to getting your feedback on this.

Bug fixes

Most of the bugs we fixed in February were related to newly added functionality. We also fixed a couple of (rare) crashes that we received via the Google Play Developer Console. Nothing too exciting.

Releases

Tags: 2023-recap Android Development K-9 Mail Thunderbird Thunderbird Android

19 responses

Axel wrote on

I’m running the latest beta, 6.509. K-9 just keeps getting better and better. Keep up the great work, guys!

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Thanks for helping us test the beta, Axel, much appreciated.

Dave Hamara wrote on

Has oauth2 been implemented yet? I would love to start beta testing but can’t access any of my email accounts without it.

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Yes it has, Dave, give it a shot!

Adrienne Boswell wrote on

I am so happy about this. I used K-9 back in the day and so happy it’s now part of Thunderbird. I just installed it and will be using it exclusively. Thank you!

fuorigioco wrote on

excellent job! please add transparent and dark theme in widgets! white background not good!

john wrote on

I’ve used thunderbird from day one. I am so looking forward to it on Android. At this time I use Bluemail on my phone because K9 mail doesnt play nice with my samsung watch but I know it want be long until it does. Thank all of you guys for making such a great program.

Bill wrote on

Will K-9 Mail be implementing sender domain avatars/favicons in the Message List ?

(ie. the kind of service as discussed here: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2021/displaying-favicons-for-any-domain/ )

Other email clients such as Spark, BlueMail, Yahoo etc provide this feature & I think its important for of a modern email client.

Jason Evangelho wrote on

At the moment, we’re not keen on including such functionality in the app because it has privacy implications. However, we do welcome your input here: https://github.com/thundernest/k-9/issues/6218

Pete wrote on

Really looking forward to have Thunderbird on Android. Does K-9 currently (or in the future) support HTML in signatures? One of the reasons I had to move away from K-9 (going first to K-@, which is now outdated, and then to fairemail) is that I need signatures that can display HTML content. Thanks.

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hi Pete, it doesn’t support HTML signatures, but we do have that planned as a future feature.

Geoff G wrote on

I started using K9 on my Android based phone and tablet from when Thunderbird said that it was becoming part of the Thunderbird and Mozilla family. I have been using Thunderbird since it’s very early, if not first release, first under Windows and then in Linux. I have noticed that even in the K9 stable versions they are being updated reasonably fast, and so far pleased with it while looking forward to the future enhancements, and also to when it bears the “Thunderbird for Android” branding.

John Hoss wrote on

I am so excited about your progress.
Will the name K9 stay or will there be a ‘rebranding’ like “Thunderbird mobile” or something equal?
If yes, when will this take place?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

It will be rebranded to “Thunderbird for Android” and that transition should happen in late summer or early fall 2023.

Katherine wrote on

Loving everything in Thunderbird and K-9 these days! Great work! 🙂

Ken Dutton wrote on

This Thunderbird /K-9 version can’t come soon enough for me as Maildroid my current client is a pain!

My only request would be to turn OFF Threading as the default, which now seems the norm on the desktop version. My one and only beef about T’bird. 🙂

Tom Leonard wrote on

Have been a longtime Thunderbird user on my windows desktop, but to this point I’ve been forced to use bluemail for my Android phone. I’m now trying K-9 and so far, the experience has been great. I’m really looking forward to the hierarchical folder view as this most closely mirrors my Thunderbird usage. Thanks so much for bringing Thunderbird to my Android device.

F4b10 wrote on

I’m actually using the last beta of k-9, I love it so much much. I’m looking forward to seeing the sync of the tags between Thunderbird and K-9.
Thank you for your big work.

Jan Severin wrote on

Hi
Nice and stable app.
It would be really nice if you added the option of a sending sound that confirms that you have sent an email.
Best regards
Jan Severin

Comments are closed.