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Welcome to Thunderbird 128 “Nebula”

76 responses

On behalf of the entire team, the Thunderbird Council, and our global community of contributors, I’m excited to announce the initial release of Thunderbird 128 “Nebula.” This annual Extended Support Release (ESR) builds on the solid foundation established by Supernova last year.

Nebula ushers in significant improvements to Thunderbird’s code, stability, overall user experience, and the speed at which we can deliver new features to you.

Screenshot of the Thunderbird email client showing the 'Unified Folders' pane on the left, a list of emails in the center, and a selected email on the right. The selected email is titled 'Meet Nebula' and discusses the new features of Thunderbird 128, including an updated Cards View and searchable Folder Pane. The email interface includes various tags such as Important, Work, Personal, ToDo, Later, Upgrade, and Party.

Here’s a small sample of what you can look forward to in this initial release.

Thunderbird 128: A Rust Revolution

Logo of the Rust programming language, featuring a stylized 'R' within a gear-like circle, primarily in dark blue and white colors.

We’ve devoted significant development time integrating Rust — a modern programming language originally created by Mozilla Research — into Thunderbird. Even though this is a seemingly invisible change, it is a major leap forward because it enhances our code quality and performance. This overhaul will allow us to share features between the desktop and future mobile versions of Thunderbird, and speed up our development process. It’s a win for our developers and a win for you.

Redesigned Cards View

Screenshot of a list view of email notifications in an email client. The list includes emails from Alessandro Castellani, Laurel Terlesky, Micah Ilbery, Solange Valverde, Monica Ayhens-Madon, and Melissa Autumn, each with a profile photo, subject line, and '2 replies' indicator."

The Cards View, which debuted in 115 Supernova, has been tuned and refined for an even better experience. The new layout is more attractive and makes it easier to scan your email threads and glean information at a glance. Plus, the height of email cards adjusts automatically based on your settings, ensuring everything looks just right.

Enhanced Folder Pane

Screenshot of the 'Unified Folders' pane in an email client, displaying folders such as Inbox (with 10 unread messages), Drafts, Templates, Sent, Archive, Spam, and Trash. The interface has a dark theme with colorful icons.

The Folder Pane has received several improvements, including faster rendering and searching of unified folders, better recall of message thread states, and multi-folder selection. We hope these changes make managing your folders faster and more intuitive.

Three variations of email notification cards featuring a profile photo of Alessandro Castellani, with different colored borders: orange, blue, and green. Each card displays a message preview and indicates '2 replies' below the message.

Accent Colors

Thunderbird now offers improved theme compatibility, which is especially beneficial for our Linux users on Ubuntu and Mint. Your Thunderbird should blend seamlessly with your desktop environment, matching the system’s accent colors perfectly.

More Refinements & Updates

Account Color Customization: By popular demand, you can now customize the color of your account icons. These colors also appear in the “From” selection when composing emails, adding a light personal touch to your email experience.

Streamlined Menu Navigation: We’ve simplified menu navigation with better visual cues and reduced cognitive load. These enhancements make using Thunderbird more efficient and enjoyable.

Native Windows Notifications: Thunderbird’s native Windows notifications are now fully functional. Clicking a notification will dismiss it, bring Thunderbird to the foreground, and select the relevant message. Notifications also disappear when Thunderbird is closed, ensuring a seamless experience.

Improved Context Menu: The context menu has been reorganized for a smoother experience, with primary actions now displayed as icons for quick access.

Upcoming Exchange and Mozilla Sync Features

We plan to launch the first phase of built-in support for Exchange, as well as Mozilla Sync, in a future Nebula point release (e.g. Thunderbird 128.X). Although these features are very close to being finished, technical obstacles prevented them from being ready today. Alex will keep you updated in his monthly Thunderbird Monthly Dev Digests.

For advanced users who want to help test our initial implementation of Exchange (currently limited to Mail), it is now available in our Daily and Beta builds. This Wiki page has more information as well as instructions for enabling it. While we definitely welcome your testing and feedback, please keep in mind this feature is currently experimental, and you may run into unexpected behavior or errors.

Looking Forward

In space, a supernova creates the building blocks of creation. In a nebula, those elements nurture new possibilities. Thunderbird 128 Nebula brings together and builds on the best of Supernova! Expect more updates and useful new features in the coming months.


Thank you for being a part of the growing Thunderbird community and sharing this adventure with us. Your feedback and support motivate us to chase constant improvements and deliver the best email experience possible.

Thunderbird 128 Availability For Windows, Linux, and macOS

[Updated July 31] Even with QA and beta testing, any major software release may have issues exposed after significant public testing. That’s why we are slowly enabling automatic updates until we’re confident no such issues exist. As of July 29, we have enabled manual upgrade to 128 via Help > About, and some users will begin receiving automatic updates. Thunderbird version 128.0 is also offered as direct download from thunderbird.net. For users running Thunderbird from the snap or flatpak, 128 is also available.

This post has been automatically translated from English to other languages by DeepL. Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors.

Tags: Nebula Thunderbird 128

76 responses

RU-DIK wrote on

This blog was published on 07/12/2024, but your first screenshot shows the date 07/10/2023! :((

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

128 had a slight delay, and the screenshots show the intended release date. Changing the screenshots would have just delayed this blog post even more!

zakius wrote on

do you consider supporting the available exchange-ish features on personal accounts too?
there are calendars and contacts for sure and I think you can access emails in a proprietary way too, though that doesn’t matter much for personal accounts as the extra features aren’t really useful anyway (mentions, unsends and such only work within organization after all)

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

That is a really good question. Can you describe some of those features more specifically, either here or even better, in an idea on Mozilla Connect? https://connect.mozilla.org

Jennifer Inglis wrote on

Hi, why is Thunderbird starting to use an obsolete programming language like Rust when newer and better options like Zig, Nim, and Gleam are available now? Why not just go with a modern and better option?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Our developers answered all those questions (and more) in this blog post: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/04/adventures-in-rust-bringing-exchange-support-to-thunderbird/

W. G. Coberly wrote on

I have contributed to Thunderbird development. And I commend the advances that you’ve made. But I think I speak on behalf of multiple user who would like to know about the status of the development of Thunderbird for mobile apps. Please provide an update. Again, thank you for your wonderful work!

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Thank you for your contributions! We provide monthly updates on this very blog:
https://blog.thunderbird.net/category/thunderbird-mobile/

Thunderbird User wrote on

Best email client for Linux ever ! keep going guys <3

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Awww, thanks! We’ve been doing this 20 years and we have no plans on stopping anytime soon!

Mykola wrote on

I wish translate would be integrated into one of the future versions both on desktop and mobile (maybe using Rust?) like it has been recently integrated with Firefox. For me, the translate feature is the only reason to use GMail + Chrome

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

This is something we’re thinking about, a lot. We’d love to have it built in – but we also want it to be both privacy respecting and accurate. So….watch this space for more discussions?

RU-DIK wrote on

Why is the date July 10, 2023 on the first screenshot ???

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Because we originally intended to release 128 on July 10 but hit an unexpected delay.

Gerson wrote on

Looks nice! And the cards view seem to properly handle threads of inbox+sent messages just like in gmail/outlook. This was really a missing feature! But I wonder if it now works properly with the imap archive folders. I’ll give it a try once the update pops up on my distro.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the feedback, and we’re really proud of how Cards view keeps evolving!

And as much as we love shiny, new things, it’s never a bad idea to wait for that .1 or .2 release before upgrading.

VP of Glean Glance at Council of Councils wrote on

Is there a way to DISABLE that attraction? I just need to work with my E-mails, don’t need someone’s ideas about attraction inside my mailbox! I have Outlook if I want that attractions! Are you cooking outlook??? How do I disable thode fancy distracting colors, gradients and this mess you bring to my mailbox with an update?? Do I need to rollback, or uninstall and move my team to something else??

—-

The Cards View, which debuted in 115 Supernova, has been tuned and refined for an even better experience. The new layout is more attractive and makes it easier to scan your email threads and glean information at a glance. Plus,

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

In Message List Display Options, toggle on Table View instead of Cards View.

nomopote wrote on

Its 2024 and thunderbird still can not do two basic things:

1) fill address book using received/sent mailes
2) show mails in conversations.

Its incredible how Thunderbird develoeprs are unable to deliver very basic functionality that every modern email client has for atleast a decade. And then you ask for a donation. I wouldn’t use it even if you paid me to do it, because its efficiency killer.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Can you provide more detail on your first point, either here or at Mozilla Connect (https://connect.mozilla.org)? What sort of level of automation are you wanting? There is an Add-on that might have the functionality you want: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-CA/thunderbird/addon/collectaddresses/?src=search

And we know that conversation view is something that is wanted and needed, and unfortunately this relies on some extensive backend changes to the message database. In the meantime, there is another community Add-on that can help bridge the gap: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-CA/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/?src=ss

Filipe Saraiva wrote on

Thank you qnd congratulations for the new release! Does system tray support on Linux available in this release?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

System tray support for Linux will be coming in one of the initial point releases, and this will be a feature we will continue to develop and add more functionality to.

Jennifer Snow Wolff wrote on

I’ve always liked Mozilla. I have Mac OS. I dislike gmail. I’d love to switch but need help organizing my desktop. I am disabled cognitively. I had a brain injury a subharacnoid hemmorage in March of 2004.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Hello! Sorry for the approval today – our social team is small (like most of our teams) and we’ve been a bit overwhelmed.

Thank you for sharing your story, and we want Thunderbird to be as cognitively accessible as possible. Right now, we are working on videos helping new users to Thunderbird get started – and maybe asking on our official community support page might help you. As much as we wish we could give individual support to everyone, we’re only a few people for millions of users. This is why we’re trying to focus on making documents and videos that can help so many more people. But thinking about cognitively disabled users, and making those videos and documents accessible, is a good thing for us to remember.

Jennifer Snow Wolff wrote on

I await your moderation. The ball is in your court!

Ben wrote on

First of all, thank you very much for your great work. I have a question regarding the Thunderbird 128 Upgrade. The last paragraph says that you are still waiting to activate the automatic updates and that the upgrade from 115 is only available as a direct download. However, when TB 128 was released last week, I was able to upgrade to the new version as normal using the integrated update function after clicking on the menu item “About Thunderbird”. Now the question arises: Can I continue to use the new version 128 without any worries or should I go back to version 115?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hi Ben! You likely caught that upgrade in the 30 minute window when automatic updates slipped through the cracks — which was not intended. You can absolutely continue to use 128 safely.

Johan wrote on

Why can’t I send files from Thunar file manager with the Thunderbird tarball?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Sorry for the delay in this answer – we’d suggest asking this question in XFCE forums/communities, if you haven’t already. Thanks!

Fred Hill wrote on

I updated to 128 last week when it was offered and since that time one of the mailboxes no longer connects to the server for outgoing mail. All server settings are the same and no password changes were made. Can’t figure it out. Can I switch back to 115 for awhile?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

What was the email server? And so sorry for the delay in replying – is this behavior still happening?

Andy wrote on

I am very much looking forward to the exchange point release! i will probably wait until then to upgrade.

I love extensions, but i don’t love “having” to use them for proper compatibility. (but alas i am used to this because i run on linux 🙂 )

That being said, many thanks to jobisoft for all his hard work on tbsync, but i am very much looking forward to having native exchange support! and not having to use an extension to enable a major function!

Toast wrote on

Hi Jason!
I have caught the upgrade myself. Additionally I also got a downgrade a little later which I notice now that I want to start Thunderbird. At that point a note informs me that my profile might have got changed by the newer version and could be incompatible. At that point I did not proceed and chose the quit option.
Can you please help me to figure out what are my options from here?
Thanks in advance

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Sorry for the delay! Can you let us know what has happened in the meantime? Were you able to safely downgrade, or to upgrade again later?

faulpeltz wrote on

I upgraded to 128.0 on flathub when it was released last week, but today it suddenly went back to 115.13 ESR, this version doesn’t like the new profile, so I went back to the previous build

Will 128 be released on flathub or do I need to switch to the binary distribution for now?

Also great job with the whole overhaul effort it is much appreciated!

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hi, 128 *is* available on Flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/org.mozilla.Thunderbird
Perhaps a refresh of your repo sources is needed?

Alwyn Barry wrote on

I run Windows and Fedora Linux. Windows updated Thunderbird, but there is only a FlatPak of 115 and not 128. So now I can’t read email on my main Fedora desktop because the Windows Thunderbird has updated the profile.

When is a Thunderbird 128 flatpak coming out??

Its the first time there has been a problem in all by [many, many] years of using Thunderbird and its predecessors, and so well done for such an amazing past – looking forward to a quick resolution of this current problem.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Flathub now has 128! Sorry for the delay – it was definitely unexpected – but flathub now has the latest ESR release! We hope this has helped. 🙂

G S wrote on

The new Thunderbird seems great! I’m looking forward to more updates.

Is there a roadmap of proposed updates?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Yes, our roadmap currently lives at https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap

Martin Weißhaupt wrote on

I really like the changes you guys are doing to Thunderbird, than you guys for everything.

I have two questions regarding the new and upcomping releases:
– The card view is nice in 3 column layout but in the classic layout (which I prefer) there is a lot of empty space. So I wonder if there is a way to configure it to consist of only two lines instead of three. If not I think this would be a nice addition for the future.
– I’m currently using and paying the owl plugin for Exchange. It would be nice if some details about the Exchange integration could be shared. For example if there is a cooperation between the plugin developer and Thunderbird devs.

Chris wrote on

The UI is definitely improved. I would like to see system tray icon support, close on tray and notifications improvement.

asdg wrote on

How do I get the old cards view back?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Go to the Message List display options (upper right hand corner) to toggle Table View, which is the previous view before 115.

kat wrote on

How do I get the old card view back?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Go to the Message List display options (upper right hand corner) to toggle Table View, which is the previous view before 115.

Eli wrote on

I’ve years using your program but now the menu in the reply email is nearly invisible.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Hi! Can you share a screenshot to help show this issue?

hg wrote on

When will you have an automatic update from 115 to 128?

If I’ll do a new installation will I lose all my settings?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Updates from the About page are now enabled, and installing over a previous install should keep all of your settings.

faulpeltz wrote on

It seems an ESR version was released by mistake, but this has been fixed already:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1908299

Larry Sessions wrote on

I have the most recent update (7/16/24 maybe). Anyway, all of a suddent Thunderbird is demanding that I sign on with Google. I never set this up (at least not intentionally) and I do NOT want Thunderbird accessing my gmail account. I use gmail as a backup and if TB accessed it I would end up with all kinds of duplicates. What happened here and how can I fix it?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Have you perhaps used Gmail at any point for *sending* messages? If so, that could be why Thunderbird is asking for authorization. Is there any reference to a Google Mail server in Settings > Account Settings > Outgoing Server? Is a Google Mail mailbox listed anywhere in this Account Settings tab?

If that doesn’t help you track down why this is happening, please post your issue at https://support.mozilla.org. Thanks!

Larry Sessions wrote on

Forgot to mention that I am on Windows 11 home desktop with the latest updates.

Franck wrote on

We are currently facing a permission issue with Office365 accounts with this new release.
Thunderbird is asking to access mailboxes as the singed-in user via Exchange Web Services.
Is there any way of disabling this ? EWS permissions are not granted anymore for security reasons.
Where can I report this? Here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home

WEK wrote on

Nice to hear, here in Holland, I was starting up in the 30minuts-periode. Some AddOn have to be muted (manifest), but it works great !
Thank you for de the great job for years !

Lars wrote on

Attachmed files list still being “hidden” at the bottom of the message view, instead of displaying them rightly available at the top right after the header infromation?

When would this be rectified?

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hi Lars, this is a good UI suggestion, and we’d love to see it added and discussed at Mozilla Connect. If you have a moment, please consider suggesting it here: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas/label-name/thunderbird

Richard Huelbig wrote on

Fine work people! Thank you. I’m not much on keeping up with blogs, so I do hope that when you release the version with sync you will make a BIG DEAL out of it–release notes, etc. Why? Because that will be a BIG DEAL and I know many folks are looking forward to it!

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hearing this loud and clear, Richard!

Mark Lewin wrote on

That link is incorrect – it should be: https://blog.thunderbird.net/category/mobile-news/

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hey Mark, which link are you referring to? We didn’t intend to have any links pointing to K-9 Mail/TB for Android, since this is a post exclusively about Thunderbird on Desktop.

George wrote on

Great work guys. I have been with you since 1998!
And you are our default email client for everybody in our organisation.
I have only one question. What is the progress of maildir message storage? Without it daily incremental backups are so much bulkier. Thank you!

Michael Casey wrote on

All well and good.
Is there a sort function for Message Filters?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Sorry for the delay, but there’s an Add-on for that! https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/quickfilters/

GerryT wrote on

Previously (I think it was in a Thunderbird blog post of May 2024), it was mentioned that Thunderbird 128 gets a complete overhaul/rewrite of the “Compact Folder” feature. However, it is not mentioned in the release notes of 128 Nebula. What happened to it and when is it going to be released? Thanks!

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Eeep, it didn’t make it into our release notes, but yes, the overhaul was completed! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1890448

GerryT wrote on

Many thanks!

GerryT wrote on

Many thanks! The overhauled Folder compaction is highly appreciated 🙂

J N wrote on

I’m liking the update to Thunderbird 128, especially Account Color Customization!

One question I have is whether it is possible to access the Account Colour set for each account using custom CSS – I’d like to use the colour set for each account to customise the card border colour in the message list, in addition to changing the folder icon.

When inspecting with the Developer tools, I see that there is a variable var(–account-color), but this does not correspond the account colour that I have set for each account, instead it appears to point to var(–selected-item-color), which in turn points to var(–sidebar-highlight-background, AccentColor), and so I can change the border colour to the accent colour, not the individual account colour.

Is var(–account-color) meant to point to the custom colour set for each account? Or is there some other way to access the colour that I have set for each account. Thanks!

Jason Evangelho wrote on

Hey J N,
I would encourage you to ask this on Reddit (https://reddit.com/r/Thunderbird) or on our community support site (https://support.mozilla.org) where you’ll have access to many, many more knowledgeable minds who could answer this.

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Johan wrote on

It won’t display the Thunderbird icon on the MX Linux Xfce panel.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Hi Johan. Is this still an issue?

rafaas69 wrote on

Si no es una actualizacion, eso quiere decir que tengo que volver a introducir todos los parametros y cuentas de correo?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Updates have now been enabled, but downloading over a previous version should keep your settings!

Comments are closed.