5mo ago

Thunderbird Beta for Android is now out!

github.com GitHub - thunderbird/thunderbird-android: Thunderbird for Android – Open Source Email App for Android (fka K-9 Mail)

Thunderbird for Android – Open Source Email App for Android (fka K-9 Mail) - thunderbird/thunderbird-android

#Features

Thunderbird for Android branding is now available
Material 3 Navigation drawer
Updated color scheme
Allow migrating settings directly from an existing K-9 or Thunderbird for Android install
Make use of Glean SDK
Add basic feature setup for funding via Google Play subscriptions (we'll use this for financial contributions)
Use [...] for outer subject when encrypting the subject
Remove "Move/copy destination folders" setting
Remove "Folders to search" setting
Remove folder push class to simplify folder notifications

42 comments

TIL that this is the successor of K9.
Awesome news! I hope.
- They have been the same team for the past 2 years. I think they have done a pretty good job developing new features thoughtfully and improving the user experience. One thing I'm really enjoying about this release is that they have made it much faster to toggle between accounts.
  If they are confident adding their branding, then I take it as a show of confidence in their work.
- I don't believe K-9 is going anywhere. They will be about the same code base

Let's fucking goooooo
Was waiting for this to move off the Outlook app
Also, for those wanting simple updates, check Obtainium
- ~~Speaking off, I'm still having issues adding it, since it still get confused by the k9 original repo origin, even if i try to filter the pre-release .apk's with the thunderbird name.~~ My bad, still kept the k9-mail repo instead of the thunderbird fork.
  
  Weird, for me adding the url and checking 'Include prereleases' was enough
  
  It has a new id so you will need to add it as a new app if you have K-9 installed
- It should be on F-droid at some point
- For anybody having trouble with K-9 Mail and Thunderbird being in the same Release section, add this to Filter APKs by Regular Expression:
  To get only Thunderbird Updates: ^thunderbird-.*apk$
  To get only K-9 Mail Updates: ^k9-.*apk$

Ugh they didn't keep the same oauth flow so I have to get IT to approve it again for Outlook
- I'm not sure, but that could be connected to the name change K9➡️Thunderbird. They have said that they will maintain parallel releases of both (identical except for the name/branding) for the immediate future. This release appears to be the identical but may (or may not) solve the issue.
  
  Yup, should be the same release, just using a different token and therefore needs approved separately

Is the 'Thunderbird for Android 8.0b1 (beta)' release available through F-Droid?
- I don't see it on F-Droid or Izzy's repositories yet.
  Obtainium (Get android app updates directly from the source) https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.imranr.obtainium.fdroid/
  is handy for cases like these
  
  Thanks. I prefer to use a package manager and have some vetting done before installing anything.
- It should be about the same as K-9

Does anybody use Titan Mail and have an opinion of how this compares?

hopefully they eventually add support for email contacts (not handled through Android contacts) for autocomplete.

NGL https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.email is a lot better...
- And here I thought K9's design looked a decade outdated already
  
  What do you mean? This is perfectly modern. Material UI and minimal, outline style icon theme. That's all the rage with web devs nowadays. Amazing.
  (Not that there's anything wrong with that in this case, that's the Android style after all. But personally I heavily dislike Material UI.)
  I would say that this UI is ugly though. Spacing is all over the place, the icons don't look cohesive at all apart from the colors used (for example, rounded vs sharp corners), the yellowed paper looking background color, overuse of bold/italic/colored text (especially multiple of those at the same time), inconsistent display of the same thing (in one screenshot the mailbox name is displayed as "Gmail", in the other as "[Gmail]"). And so on.
  But that doesn't mean it's "outdated", this would have been equally as bad 10 years ago.
  (I just have a knee jerk reaction to people saying "outdated UI" because usually it's used as a justification to replacing perfectly well designed UI with a worse version just so that it follows contemporary design trends. Cf the Windows Settings app.)
  
  FairEmail design looks modern. Its just ugly and way too busy
  
  That's half the reason I like Thunderbird. Email hasn't changed for 20 years, and neither has Thunderbird's interface. I don't need shadows and 3D effects and stylised colours and buttons, I just want a white page with black text displaying the content of my incoming messages.
- Better how? There's no right or wrong answer, I had both.
  
  The menus are definitely busy and confusing (there are many options), but once it's set up I've never been bothered by the UI. I quite like how emails are shown OOTB in fact, with the right padding and day separation; I also use most buttons that are offered by default. So yeah, sane defaults.
  Off the top of my head what I like:
  you can search emails on the server! That's the one feature I couldn't forgo
  it detects unsubscribe links
  I remember having delays when using K9, with FairEmail not once. This could be fixed now
  it cleverly shows you're connected to a VPN (which can be a problem with emails)
  maybe too many options, but a lot are actually useful
  Not trying to say it's better, to each their own. But it's great.
  edit: I received an email at 06:19 in fairemail. it's now 06:56 and I just received it in thunderbird
- rather https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail or https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.faircode.email/
- Not bad for a mail client for the early 2000s.