Release Notes

Thunderbird Desktop

Version 128.0esr | Released July 11, 2024

Check out the notes below for this version of Thunderbird. As always, you’re encouraged to tell us what you think, ask for help, or file a bug in Bugzilla.

Thunderbird version 128.0 is only offered as direct download from thunderbird.net and not as an upgrade from Thunderbird version 115 or earlier. A future release will provide updates from earlier versions.

For more on all the new features in Thunderbird 128, see What’s New in Thunderbird 128.

System Requirements: Details

What’s New

new

UI density now affects multi-message view

new

Added new preference mail.addressDisplayFormat to always display full name and email address of all recipients in message list

new

"Archived-At" message header field is now displayed as a link, and Message Permalink option is now available in List-Id menu

new

Threaded message views now include "New Message" count

new

Cards View hover and selection paradigms introduced to better support custom themes and accent colors

new

Added account context menu to Unified Toolbar "Get Messages" button, creating quick access option to retrieve new messages for individual accounts

new

OpenPGP no longer attempts to re-initialize secret key storage if individual OpenPGP secret key passphrases have been enabled

new

OpenPGP Key Manager can now create revocation statements for any secret key

new

A nested OpenPGP message's signature status is now viewable

new

Changing expiration of OpenPGP keys with a "complex" structure is now supported

new

Enabled ECDH encryption and decryption for S/MIME messages

new

Custom account colors are now shown in the "From" field when composing a message

new

Manual account configuration now implements form validation

new

iCloud contacts and calendar discovery now supported when using a dedicated app password

new

Improved layout of LDAP address book properties dialog

new

Thunderbird now uses native Windows notifications

new

Added support for OS-specific accent colors

new

Added system accent color support for various elements

new

Selection indicator added to folder pane and address book pane

new

Thunderbird now decodes messages nested in attachments even if decodeSubMessages preference is set to "false"

What’s Changed

changed

Improved Cards View readability and accessibility

changed

Better threading and unread/new indicators for Cards View threaded messages

changed

Removed Account Provisioner

changed

Search bars in Thunderbird now use a common custom element for more consistency

changed

Updated donation link from "give.thunderbird.net" to "www.thunderbird.net/donate/"

changed

Activity Manager now shows account and full folder path when indexing

changed

Spam and Junk message styling in Card UI adjusted to be less distracting

changed

Removed mail.openpgp.key_assistant.enable preference

changed

Disabled support for LibrePGP v5 AEAD/OCB decryption

changed

"Permissive" importing of problematic OpenPGP keys now disabled by default; Set mail.openpgp.allow_permissive_import to allow

changed

A warning is now displayed when importing OpenPGP keys that advertise unsupported features

changed

Default sort order of messages in message list changed to descending (newest at top)

changed

Added Show more/less buttons to notifications in Account Hub

changed

Removed "Becky! Internet Mail" importer

changed

The "prefer display name" preference for individual contacts was removed in favor of the global preference

changed

Address book updated to new card design

changed

Addressbook toolbar updated with the same UI/UX paradigms of the folder pane

changed

Folder alerts now display full path of affected folder

changed

IMAP "Too Many Connections" alerts now display IMAP server name

changed

Date range intervals in "Find Events" panel updated

changed

Calendar ICS file import now always uses new importer

What’s Fixed

fixed

Thunderbird "--migration" flag opened empty window

fixed

"Confirm Deletion" prompt was incorrectly shown when deleting messages with Grouped By header also selected

fixed

Thunderbird did not remove temporary directory created from adding attachment to message via drag-and-drop

fixed

Certificate errors silently failed when fetching new messages

fixed

Clicking on native Windows notifications did not bring Thunderbird to the foreground

fixed

3-pane view was blank after starting Thunderbird with unsent messages in outbox

fixed

Some menu bar items did not work with all Thunderbird windows closed on macOS

fixed

Sender in multi-message view was right aligned when the text wrapped to multiple lines

fixed

"Find in this message" did not work in multi-message view

fixed

Non-compliant "References" headers were not handled gracefully when mailnews.headers.showReferences was set

fixed

"news://" URIs failed opening as links or from the commandline

fixed

Thunderbird sometimes displayed a blank screen on startup

fixed

Standalone window titles no longer included message subject on macOS

fixed

Links with IP address as link text and destination incorrectly warned user that link text and destination did not match

fixed

"Open message in conversation" and "Open message in containing folder" from a standalone window failed

fixed

"Get Messages" toolbar button was initially disabled after opening a message from a file in a new window

fixed

"Open Browser With Message-ID" failed for Google Groups due to URL change

fixed

Focus behavior for opening messages in a new tab changed depending on state of mail.tabs.loadInBackground preference

fixed

Focus changes in 3-pane view occassionally caused keyboard shortcuts to stop working

fixed

Selected row in folder pane did not always remain visible when using keyboard navigation

fixed

Using middle-mouse click on a message (open in background tab) did not work

fixed

Group-by-sort Unified folders were slow to open when expanded-all

fixed

Holding Shift key while selecting "Delete" from message context menu did not permanently delete message

fixed

Holding Shift and middle-clicking a message with loadInBackground preference set to "false" did not open new tab in background as expected

fixed

"Watch Thread" command was incorrectly available on multi-folder and search views

fixed

"Ignore Thread" did not work on multi-folder and search views

fixed

Date column of "Grouped By" message views now refreshes at midnight, preventing incorrect dates from being displayed

fixed

Deleting a mail folder failed silently when disk space was low

fixed

Undoing deletion of an email from standalone window was not possible

fixed

Sort type in Quick Filtered and Grouped By unified folders was not preserved after search was modified or cleared

fixed

Unified Folders did not preserve sort setting when switching to unthreaded view

fixed

Thunderbird did not always display message deletion confirmation when using Shift+Delete keyboard shortcut

fixed

Deleting collapsed group in Grouped By Sort did not update the message list to reflect the change

fixed

Secondary sort was discarded when sorting threaded unified folders

fixed

Accidental deletion of multiple messages occurred when Delete was pressed and held

fixed

Message count for synthetic folder views was sometimes incorrect

fixed

Count of messages in a thread was not refreshed when a message was deleted externally

fixed

Tag folders with non-alphanumeric characters did not work correctly

fixed

Scrolling to an unread message in an expanded thread did not show as much of the thread as possible

fixed

In a synthetic view, right-clicking an unselected message incorrectly selected the message

fixed

Messages could not be sorted by columns that were not visible

fixed

Display columns reverted to default columns after an IMAP folder was repaired

fixed

Mark as "Read By Date" was not available when a folder with unread messages was selected

fixed

Dynamic height calculation for Cards View based on density and font-size

fixed

Message List display options were hidden outside of Thunderbird window

fixed

Compact icon on Unified Toolbar was updated with a compact folder icon

fixed

Improved localization of OpenPGP strings

fixed

Creating a new key from the OpenPGP Key Manager erroneously displayed a "Go Back" button on the first page of the wizard

fixed

Some OpenPGP dialogs' buttons were inaccessible off screen

fixed

OpenPGP decoding of Base64 data did not allow for spaces and tabs before footer

fixed

When using an external installation of GnuPG, Thunderbird occassionally sent/received corrupted messages

fixed

Parsing an email address with a comment caused a failure for OpenPGP

fixed

S/MIME messages did not display MIME message if MIME header was missing

fixed

S/MIME status (encryption and signature) was not shown when opening an email from a file

fixed

Add tooltip displaying full folder path when hovering over location column of thread pane

fixed

Clear button was missing from Unified Toolbar customization search bar

fixed

Global search sometimes loaded slowly when opening "Show results as lists" and other synthetic views

fixed

References and Reply-To headers were not set if they were included in mail.compose.other.header

fixed

Message compose window was not fully disabled while message was sending

fixed

Delivery Status Notification did not work when sending message using "Send Later"

fixed

Print dialog opened in Message compose window did not prevent window interaction

fixed

Source of 'news:' links were incorrectly attached to messages by default

fixed

Password Manager did not remember the last selected item when changing sorting or showing/hiding passwords in unfiltered view

fixed

Entries removed from Password Manager left behind blank entries

fixed

Messages moved to junk folder from message context menu were marked as read, regardless of whether "Mark messages determined to be junk as read" was checked/unchecked in settings

fixed

New posts retrieved from RSS feeds incorrectly played mail alert sound

fixed

No "Close" button in Cookie Manager on macOS

fixed

Pressing Esc did not close the Cookie Manager dialog

fixed

Modifying Thunderbird UI font size outside of Thunderbird caused App Menu > Font Size option to be disabled

fixed

Chat Account Settings did not allow scrolling to view overflowed window contents

fixed

Account setup triggered a second OAuth when looking for calendars

fixed

Google Calendar account detection failed for Google-hosted domains when the DNS entry had uppercase characters

fixed

Thunderbird did not have a preference to enable archiving inbox as a folder

fixed

Yahoo! and AOL account message filters only filtered most recent message match

fixed

Querying DNS TXT records that return multiple records failed

fixed

Yahoo! and AOL account message filters only filtered most recent message match

fixed

"Copy/Cut" context menus did not work in extension options pages

fixed

Adding duplicate mail addresses in "New/Edit mailing list" dialog, pressing OK, then removing one of the duplicate addresses caused both addresses to be removed

fixed

Address Book scrolling did not work when using keyboard navigation

fixed

CardDAV addressbooks could not be used as an import target

fixed

Removing Organizational Properties from a contact did not clear all organization-related fields

fixed

CardDAV contacts were synced to server when no changes were made

fixed

Compose window toolbar items were unreadable on macOS in dark mode

fixed

Dark mode colors were inconsistent throughout Thunderbird

fixed

NVDA keyboard table navigation of message list did not work in table view

fixed

IMAP folders containing other folders could not be deleted due to Thunderbird using "unsubscribe" IMAP command

fixed

Draft messages were not replaced when saved to an IMAP server without UIDPLUS support

fixed

Connection sometimes timed out when a large number of POP3 messages were left on server

fixed

SMTP messages using GSSAPI authentication failed to send

fixed

Status of IMAP message download progress was incorrect in some locales

fixed

Newsgroup messages were sometimes incorrectly interleaved when using offline cache

fixed

Thunderbird sometimes froze when checking for new messages on multiple POP3 accounts simultaneously

fixed

POP3 tried using USERPASS first (plaintext credentials), before attempting AUTH PLAIN and AUTH LOGIN (obfuscated credentials)

fixed

POP3 server connection sometimes timed out when processing LIST and UIDL responses

fixed

Restart was necessary to read an NNTP message if a network error occured during message retrieval

fixed

Account manager and about:support could break if the chat buddy list became corrupted

fixed

IRC SASL authentication was enabled by default for all IRC servers

fixed

IMAP accounts with missing or incorrect OAuth credentials sometimes caused duplicate dialogs to appear, requesting a new OAuth token

fixed

Hardware key multi-factor authentication did not work in Thunderbird Flatpak

fixed

Thunderbird defaulted to insecure connection when Exchange Autodiscover configuration was misconfigured

fixed

Thunderbird incorrectly rejected some valid RSS feeds

fixed

macOS performance improvements

fixed

Updating times of recurring events also modified the event exception times

fixed

Calendar 'Find Events Pane' did not match search terms if they included uppercase letters

fixed

Calendar day headings did not switch between short and long form when resizing calendar view

fixed

Task categories menu did not display category colors

fixed

Today Pane was not Keyboard accessible

fixed

"Item changed on server" calendar dialog did not have a scrollbar for long content, causing action buttons to be off screen

fixed

Accepting/declining appointments did not always send confirmation

fixed

Convert To > Event did not save events on some CalDAV servers

fixed

Context menu cleanup

fixed

Various Cards View UX improvements

fixed

Various visual and UX improvements

Known Issues

unresolved

"latest" download bouncer aliases are not available for 128.0esr at this time

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