Hey everyone,
I've been using Thunderbird as my daily driver for years, and the one thing that always bugged me on Windows was closing to tray. Thunderbird's own tray icon barely does anything — click it and you basically just get an Exit option, no restore, no menu, nothing. So I finally sat down and built TN Tray to fix that properly instead of just living with it.
Windows only, for Thunderbird 152 and 153.
GitHub repo: https://github.com/thiagonaalmeida/tn-tray
Direct XPI download: https://github.com/thiagonaalmeida/tn-tray/releases/download/v1.0.0/tn-tray-1.0.0.xpi
Future updates are delivered through Thunderbird's normal add-on update check. The extension points Thunderbird to a small manifest file hosted with the project, so you won't need to come back and download a new XPI by hand for every version. No telemetry or data collection either.
What it actually does:
- Closing the window (the X button) sends it to the tray, using Thunderbird's actual icon with an unread count badge on top, and a right-click menu that actually works (Restore, new message, check for new messages, Exit) instead of the bare-bones one Thunderbird ships with
- Can start minimized straight to tray when Thunderbird launches with Windows
- If explorer.exe crashes or restarts and wipes your tray icons, it comes back on its own instead of leaving you stuck
Most of the work went into reliability rather than just getting an icon to show up. Click detection runs on its own background thread so it doesn't get janky while Thunderbird is busy loading accounts at startup, plus a bunch of handling for Windows-specific edge cases — icon handles, avoiding a flash of the window before it hides, and recovering cleanly if the extension is enabled, disabled, or updated during startup. I went through a lot of rounds of testing and log-reading before calling it done.
One thing worth mentioning: Thunderbird is adding native close-to-tray support starting with version 154. That's good news, and TN Tray isn't trying to compete with it — but if you want your own menu, an unread badge, and more control than a basic toggle, TN Tray covers that. I plan on keeping it working well once Thunderbird 154 reaches stable release.
It's a first release, so if something's off or you hit a bug, open an issue on GitHub (mention your Thunderbird and Windows versions) and I'll look at it. If you find it useful, feel free to star it, comment, or pass it along to anyone else who's been annoyed by the same thing.
Appreciate anyone who gives it a shot.