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VIDEO: The Thunderbird Mobile Team

The Thunderbird Mobile team are crafting the newest chapter of the Thunderbird story. In this month’s office hours, we sat down to chat with the entire mobile team! This includes Philipp Kewisch, Sr. Manager of Mobile Engineering (and long-time Thunderbird contributor), and Sr. Software Engineers cketti and Wolf Montwé (long-time K-9 Mail maintainer and developer, respectively). We talk about the journey from K-9 Mail to Thunderbird for Android, what’s new and what’s coming in the near future, and the first steps towards Thunderbird on your iOS devices!

Next month, we’ll be chatting with Laurel Terlesky, Manager of the UI/UX Design Studio! She’ll be sharing her FOSDEM talk, “Thunderbird: Building a Cross-Platform, Scalable Open-Source Design System.” It’s been a while since we’ve chatted with the design team, and it will be great to see what they’re working on.

January Office Hours: The Thunderbird Mobile Team

In June 2022, we announced that K-9 Mail would be joining the Thunderbird family, and would ultimately become Thunderbird for Android. After two years of development, the first beta release of Thunderbird for Android debuted in October 2024, shortly followed by the first stable release. Since then, over 200 thousand users have downloaded the app, and we’ve gotten some very nice reviews in ZDNet and Android Authority. If you haven’t tried us on your Android device yet, now is a great time! And if, like some of us, you’re waiting for Thunderbird to come to your iPhone or iPad, we have some exciting news at the end of our talk.

Want to know more about the Android development process and find out what’s coming soon to the app? Want the first look into our plans for Thunderbird on iOS? Let our mobile team guests provide the answers!

Watch, Read, and Get Involved

We’re so grateful to Philipp, cketti, and Wolf for joining us! We hope this video helps explain more about Thunderbird on Android (and eventually iOS), and encourages you to download the app if you haven’t already. If you’re a regular user, we hope you consider contributing code, translations, or support. And if you’re an iOS developer, we hope you consider joining our team!

VIDEO (Also on Peertube):

Thunderbird for Android Resources:

Tags: Office Hours

6 responses

Jason Heydasch wrote on

This is exciting! A high-quality, open-source, feature-rich, and privacy-focused mail client for both macOS and iOS is *desperately* needed. Congrats on the milestones thus far!

Philip wrote on

Are there any news about Thunderbird for iOS/iPadOS?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Yes! We’re hiring our first developer positions so we can start building the app, with an eye towards alpha code available on Test Flight by the end of the year. And don’t worry – we’ll have all our iOS news and updates here on the blog in the future. 🙂

Excitedtaco wrote on

Thanks for the hard you guys! I truly do appreciate it as a user. I eagerly await the IOS release!

Guido wrote on

Thanks for all your efforts!

Is there a chance for the EWS support arriving in the mobile version for beta testing anytime soon?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for commenting! Unfortunately there would be some work adapting the desktop EWS support into the mobile app, so this isn’t on the immediate roadmap. You can vote for and comment on a suggestion in Mozilla Connect to help show demand! https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/support-exchange-web-services-protocol-in-k-9-mail/idi-p/31613

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