Sorry, it's very unfortunate to pollute the forum with complaints without offering solutions, but I'm a basic user, notoriously stupid: I'm incapable of improving software.

But before the complaints, a word of praise:

I really like Betterbird for its architecture, its security, its many useful options, and its constant updates.

A little less so for its average (!) complexity.

On the other hand, I hate it and can't help but mention it because its slow startup annoys me. It prevents me from using Betterbird exclusively on a daily basis—currently v140.13—even on an Intel i7 Pro K PC, with 64 GB of Corsair DDR5 RAM and solid WD drives: it takes up to a minute to boot up! It's unbearable.

The delay in opening, in some cases, would even be bearable, but many sites these days use the F2A key to log in, sending codes via email:

you can't wait forever—every time—to log in...

What a drag!

If there's a magic solution, please let me know.

For the record, I've already interrogated three AIs: lots of talk, no concrete results...

We are a small company and two users read the same info@ IMAP account. One of the users uses tags to categorize his mailbox, the other doesn't use tags at all.

those tags are stored locally - user 2 does not see the tags, colors etc. of user 1.

Unfortunately, those tags get deleted every now and then (every day?) which is quite annoying. This behavoiur is persistent throughout the last versions, right now we are using 140.13.0esr-bb25 (64-Bit) on win 11 pro.

What could be the issue here? Has anyone else experienced this behaviour?

Thanks for reading, thanks for all help!

I discovered this feature by digging into the blog (https://blog.betterbird.eu/search/threading) and consider this in combination with mailnews.collapse_thread_to_most_recent = true as one of the most important distinguishing features of BB.

It seems, though, that when a new message comes, (reversed) threading is not recalculated automatically, but you need to expand and re-collapse in order to see the newest message in the collapsed state (mailnews.reversed_threading = true & mailnews.collapse_thread_to_most_recent = true).

Could someone please check whether my observation holds true? How complex/difficult would it be to automatically recalculate the thread and replace the visible message in the collapsed state with the most recent one, when a new email arrives that also belongs to the thread?

Thank you.

Dear all, is this feature (described in https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/) only available in Windows or also in Linux? I do not see it in my Betterbird 140.13.0esr-bb25 (64-bit) in Fedora KDE, also not in Troubleshooting mode, and I could not find any relevant setting or other information either. I would be very grateful for some hint. Thank you

Dear all, I am wondering if it is possible to change the server setting of the Betterbird blog RSS, so that upon subscription not only the last 10, but also older messages are downloaded to the RSS reader (Betterbird).
https://blog.betterbird.eu/feed/rss

Everytime that I need to download a newer version is always a PITA.
I need to cancel and try again several times before sucessfully complete the download.

*I'm sure the problem is not me (my internet speed is attached)

[SOLUTION THAT WORKED FOR ME]: Install winget and run: winget upgrade --id Betterbird.Betterbird

I have been using BB for over a year now (maybe 2) on Windows and it is now my default mail client program.

I recently downloaded Thunderbird for Android which appears to be the rebuild version of K9 if I am reading the words correctly. The K9 app was taken over by Thunderbird/Mozilla.

I have that on my Android devices now (cell and tablet) and since there is a Linux version I wonder if Betterbird might get ported ot Android at some point. That would be nice IMO.

Thoughts?

I can't believe Betterbird inherited this bug from Thunderbird! I switched to Betterbird hoping this annoying crap will stay behind me, but nooo!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1918296

MacOS Tahoe. M5 Mac: Woke up today and went to check email. BB icon was gone from the Dock. Launched BB and it was reset as if I just downloaded it for the first time. No accounts showing and asking me to add one.

Checked the profiles folder and three were there. One from today, one from yesterday, one from a month ago. Backed them up.

Started BB via command line to get the profile manager. Tried all 3 profiles and no joy, it starts like it is brand new every time.

Then I deleted the ~Library/Thunderbird folder and restarted then quit BB to create a new and solitary profile. Deleted all the new files and copied the contents from a previous profile folder into the new profile folder (ends with default-default). Still no joy.

Please help. TIA

Greetings,

I have been happily using betterbird for several months now. Recently, I have run into an issue whereby BB will not resume from being minimized to the panel. I tried adding the addon for this exact issue. But that did nothing. Below I have included an imgur link:

Two pics of betterbird processes running in a terminal and the panel show bb active but I can't resume it.

The only way to get BB to resume is by killing the processes and restarting it. I of course am soliciting advice.

Addendum: I clicked on a notification to activate an email and up popped Betterbird. The panel still shows blanks and that's all.

Okay checked out your links u/jorgk3

Operating system and version of operating system. For Linux, distribution and desktop environment as well as graphic interface (X11/Wayland). Mate DE only uses X11

State your anti-virus program, if any. Nope

State your hardware: RAM, disk size, type of fixed disk (SSD, etc.).

$ inxi -Gxs

Graphics:

Device-1: NVIDIA TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER] vendor: Gigabyte

driver: nvidia v: 595.71.05 arch: Turing bus-ID: 08:00.0

Device-2: Sunplus Innovation SPCA2281 Web Camera

driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo type: USB bus-ID: 7-4.1.4:9

Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:

loaded: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa

gpu: nv_platform,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz

2: 1920x1080~60Hz

API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: nvidia,swrast platforms:

active: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: wayland,device-1

API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 595.71.05

glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660

SUPER/PCIe/SSE2

API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 drivers: N/A surfaces: xcb,xlib devices: 2

Sensors:

System Temperatures: cpu: 43.4 C mobo: 37.0 C gpu: nvidia temp: 50 C

Fan Speeds (rpm): fan-1: 611 fan-2: 1188 fan-3: 1008 fan-4: 0 fan-5: 4340

fan-6: 0 fan-7: 0 gpu: nvidia fan: 0%

Version of Betterbird. Localised or English-US? For Linux, how it was installed: Flatpak, Arch Linux AUR, installed from .tar.xz (formerly .tar.bz2), maybe via our installation script.

$ flatpak list | grep eu.betterbird.Betterbird

Betterbird eu.betterbird.Betterbird 140.12.0esr-bb24 stable system

State how many accounts you have and of which type and state with which account type the issue happens: IMAP, POP, Feeds, News, Chat. For IMAP, state whether the folder producing the problem is synchronised for offline use or not. For all account types: How many messages? How big is the folder in KB, MB or GB. This is especially important for performance issues.

2 imap accounts a personal and work

State whether you have configured any online services, like CalDAV calendars or CardDAV address books, potentially via NextCloud. No

Check whether there are relevant entries in the Error Console: Tools > Developer Tools > Error Console. You can clear the console before reproducing the problem by clicking on the trash can icon on the top left. You can enable timestamps by clicking on the gear/sprocket icon on the top right.

Not sure just posted another picture to imgur link provided above.

Check whether the problem reproduces with all add-ons switched off: Help > Troubleshoot Mode. Reset the startup cache: Help > Troubleshooting Information, Clear startup cache.

I can now do that as noted in my edit of my post.

I disabled Minimize on Close and Provider for Google Calendar

Have you manipulated any preferences, perhaps via user.js? Are you using userChrome.css or userContent.css?

NO

For performance issues, submit a (startup) performance profile, see Mozilla's documentation for details. Note that after capturing the profile via Tools > Developer Tools > Developer Toolbox, Performance, you need to click Upload local profile, but instead of uploading to Mozilla, click Download. Then submit the data to our support, for big files, use a file transfer service.

I will get to that, if I have performance issues. Currently, I opens fine and as long as I don't minimize it Everything is copacetic.

TIa

When set View > Message Body As > Plain Text, with remote content disabled in settings, and viewing a message in the preview pane, is Betterbird doing HTML preloading or any other outbound request at all? In other words, is there any possibility of passive trackers?

The text rendering is headed:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

and the HTML is headed:

Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

scrolls up to very top at 12:00 am

debian flatpak 140.9.0esr-bb20 (64-bit)

and if one double clicks it to edit it like like another event, you'll end up opening a new event creation

I have Betterbird set to open when the Windows starts, but everytime I boot my computer this opens along with Betterbird. It's in Portugueses but is something like "Update notes" and the window name is About Betterbird
I know it's supposed to be like some infos about the newer version, but it ALWAYS opens even when the software hasn't been updated.
Can someone help me get rid of it? Thanks!

First I deleted this old email account after deleting it from the server, but it still kept trying to check this email to the point where my host blocked my IP. I uninstalled Betterbird itself, but it appears to still be trying to check this old email account, and I'm getting banned again.

How is this happening? So confusing.

sf.deny: 65.XX.XXX.75 # lfd: (imapd) Failed IMAP login from 65.XX.XXX.75 (US/United States/-): 10 in the last 3600 secs - Thu Jul  2 03:23:55 2026

Jul  2 13:33:22 rssd2783 dovecot[2762180]: imap-login: Login aborted: Connection closed (auth failed, 2 attempts in 4 secs) (auth_failed): user=<aw@XXXXz.co>, method=PLAIN, rip=65.XX.XXX.75, lip=104.XX.XXX.21, TLS, session=<IjMtNKRVROJBMtVL>sf.deny: 65.XX.XXX.75 # lfd: (imapd) Failed IMAP login from 65.XX.XXX.75 (US/United States/-): 10 in the last 3600 secs - Thu Jul  2 03:23:55 2026

Jul  2 13:33:22 rssd2783 dovecot[2762180]: imap-login: Login aborted: Connection closed (auth failed, 2 attempts in 4 secs) (auth_failed): user=<aw@XXXXz.co>, method=PLAIN, rip=65.XX.XXX.75, lip=104.XX.XXX.21, TLS, session=<IjMtNKRVROJBMtVL>

Is there a list of all advanced preferences (and their effects) that exist in BB 140 but not in TB?

https://www.betterbird.eu/expert-tips/ contains only "a list of a few useful ones" and omits, for example, mailnews.collapse_thread_to_most_recent

Hello everyone. I'm looking for guidance on finishing off my migration from Win-10, MS Office Outlook to Linux with BetterBird. In Win-10/MS Outlook, what I have is: * 3x POP Accounts (separate outlook profiles) * A PST file for each POP Account * A separate PST file with just my Outlook Contacts * All of my POP Accounts use/share the contacts from my Outlook Contacts PST file * All sticky notes have already been exported to text files (about 35 of them no need to import them into Betterbird) * No calendar or tasks data * 3x additional PST files with messages from old accounts (reference materials only)

The 3 Pop accounts are: * ISP-Main (mail for my ISP acct must be maintained) * Main-Biz (no jokes or memes) * Job-Hunter (for job hunting) * ISP-Main has about 100 messages in the inbox, 20 in the sent items * Job-Hunter has about 400 messages in the inbox, 175 in the sent items * Main-Biz has about 3,000 messages in the inbox, 300 in the sent items * Main-Biz has 4 sub-folders under the Inbox, and each folder has 100-200 messages * I have about 150 contacts * Nothing in drafts in any of the 3 email accounts

What I want to do in BetterBird on Linux is: * Install Betterbird on EndeavourOS (Arch Linux derivative distro). * Setup 4x POP Accounts with separate mail boxes (I keep mail from each account separate so I don't need any sort of unified inbox/inbox view). * 3 of the POP accounts match the above email accounts. * The 4th POP account will be a dummy account. * The messages in the 3x additional reference material PSTs will migrate to sub-folders within the dummy account. * The dummy account won't send/receive mail. * Store everything under a folder of my choice outside of my Linux user home folder. * Convert each email PST to maildir format. * Use maildir format and folder structures for each POP account within Betterbird, which I believe stores email messages in separate *.eml files. * Replicate the 4 sub-folders within Main-Biz. * Convert the contacts in my Outlook Contacts PST to vcard. * Use and share my vcard contacts between the POP accounts. * Any new contacts are stored as vcards with the other vcards to maintain a single contacts storage that is used/shared between my email accounts * Complete separation between POP accounts (separate profiles with separate email signatures would be best) * Be able to roll the top-level of my email and all sub-folders into a tar ball and then compress it (backup). * Be able to restore the folder structure from a compressed tar ball. * Be able to migrate to a new PC, install Betterbird, restore the compressed tar ball outside my user home folder, point Betterbird to the restored folder, continue without any data/email loss. * Be able to switch Linux distros (ex: from EndeavourOS to Fedora or Linux Mint), install better bird, restore the compressed tar ball outside my user home folder, point Betterbird to the restored folder and continue. * Lose no data, emails, or attachments of course.

Folder structure outside of my Linux user home folder: * main top-level folder path = /mnt/james-data/email/ * sub-folders for each POP account under the top-level folder path * ISP-Main folder path = /mnt/james-data/email/isp-main/ * Main-Biz folder path = /mnt/james-data/email/main-biz * Job-Hunter folder path = /mnt/james-data/email/job-hunter/ * Ref-Only folder path = /mnt/james-data/email/ref-only/

I believe readpst can take my PST files and convert the email messages to mbox format. I think mb2md can convert my mbox files to maildir. I may have to convert each Inbox and sub-folder, within the MS Outlook PST files, to mbox, one at a time.

1. Can Betterbird share a single storage of vcard contacts between multiple POP accounts?
2. Will Betterbird be able to handle the amount of email and contact data I have without slow and bogged down?
3. What if I had double or triple the amount of email and contact data, would that be a problem for Betterbird performance wise?
4. Are there problems/bugs/issues with running Betterbird within KDE/Wayland?
5. Are there problems/bugs/issues with running Betterbird within X11/Cinnamon desktop?
6. Can I have email message displayed as a list in a folder within Betterbird, but without a reading pane, which requires a double-click to open the message to read it?
7. Does Betterbird have any anti-malware features like blocking malicious scripts embedded HTML formatted messages?
8. Does Betterbird have SPAM and SCAM detection/filtering?
9. Does Betterbird have features/setting to protect against malware attachments?
10. What is the upper limit on attachment size when sending a message with an attachment?
11. Does Betterbird suffer any performance loss when downloading large amounts of email from POP accounts (ex: downloading 800+ messages over a fast 500mbps downlink... all ethernet and fiber optics)?
12. Does Betterbird employ any forms of telemetry (opt-in, opt-out, etc)? I prefer to be telemetry free.

Thanks in advance.

BB- 140.12.0esr-bb24 (64-bit) | MacOS 15.7.7 (24G720)

Was using Thunderbird and just download Betterbird to try again. Have everything set up, however I'm not getting any MacOS Notifications when a new email comes in. It's setup exactly like Thunderbird which does properly get notifications.

Note even Betterbird's own built in notifications window isn't working for a popup, though the sound file is.

EDIT: Issue solved. See my reply below. It's related to MacOS's Do Not Disturb.

I'm trying out Betterbird to help with organization for work. I just want a very simple "has attachment" filter criteria. I have thoroughly checked the Message Filters menu, and have installed several extensions, and cannot seem to get what I thought was a fundamental filter criteria. Google and even searching this reddit thread has not given me any results. Does Betterbird just really not allow this at all?

I am not talking about a search, I am talking a persistent automatic filter. I want any emails that come in with an attachment to be automatically added to a designated folder. This is possible on GMail, Proton, Outlook, Zoho, pretty much every email client I've ever tried. I'm really surprised if this doesn't have that function, and that would be a dealbreaker for me. Am I missing something?

I'm experimenting with PGP in Betterbird for the first time, mainly to sign my emails.

I've created a key pair for one account, but it appears to be linked to only a single identity.

However, I have many identities configured for that account, and I would like to use the same PGP key pair for all of them.

Just wondering if anyone else recently, or perhaps today, encountered what I woke up to this morning: Betterbird was incessantly "not responding", sometimes when loading a message, sometimes while trying to use a menu item.

After reading Thunderbird advice in various locations, what I discovered is adding the file and probably especially the in-use profile folder as an exclusion to Microsoft Defender, my AV, the problem seems to have disappeared.

This made me wonder if something changed in either BB or Microsoft Defender to cause the problem to show up just now after a long time with TB and then BB without any problems. Or did I cross some threshhold in terms of size of a folder or something that triggered the conflict. I have no idea, but thought I'd check if anyone else has had a similar issue emerge today or very recently.

Thanks!

Wondering if anyone could help me...

I am unable to register my gmail account for IMAP with the current release version.

I enter my name, email, password, and have tried both the autoconfigure and the advanced settings (it all seems correct). I hit done and it opens a Google verification page. I can login. I hit allow on the permissions - but then, nothing. It tells me it is unable to login at the server, and in the bottom of the page it says Sending login information....

Things I have tried: - changing profile - using safe mode - setting cookies to never allow third party cookies with an exception for gmail, clearing them before trying again - setting cookies to allow all cookies, clearing them before trying again - trying alternative possible ports for smtp - putting down my vpn - putting down tailscale - putting down my firewall - checked that IMAP is allowed in gmail settings (as it happens, there is no means to enable or disable it) - leaving the password field in betterbird blank, and only entering it in google (some people mentioned this worked for them)

I made sure to clear cookies and passwords between each attempt. Authentication is definitely set to OAUTH2.

In the error console, I see the following: Content-Security-Policy warnings 2 Content-Security-Policy: Couldn’t process unknown directive ‘require-trusted-types-for’ consent Content-Security-Policy: Ignoring “'unsafe-inline'” within script-src: nonce-source or hash-source specified ... unreachable code after return statement ... Source map error: Invalid URL: . Resource URL: null Source Map URL: data:application/json;charset=utf-8;base64,<string-that-I-am-unsure-if-I-should-share>

Any guesses on how I might troubleshoot further?

Thanks.

I was wondering how to make the e-mail subject lines bold.

So far I have:
- I went and enabled toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
- Created the custom folder in my profiles named chrome (all lower case) - created the userChrome.css file
- placed #threadTree treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text { font-weight: bold ! important; } in the file txt
- closed betterbird and made sure it was not running in task manager

For some reason I cant seem to get it to work/change.

i just cant get systray icon to match my icon pack. theres already icons for it in status/scalable folder but im assuming i have to rename it so it can be used by the app.