'''Short version''' Why can't I set up an email account in Thunderbird for Android Beta (TFA-B) that is only known inside TFA-B and not part of the Google "accounts"? '''Long version...''' '''Context #1 - Windows''' On Windows, I have ONE login username. Once i have logged in, I use Thunderbird desktop to do email. I have 6 accounts, some of which are xxx@gmail.com, and some are yyy@anothercompany.com When I configure Thunderbird with those accounts, only Thunderbird knows about those account - they are not part of Windows. I'm certain that MacOS works the same. '''Context #2 - Android''' I have been using Gmail as my email app for quite a long time. I registered the phone with xxx@gmail.com so it appears in the Settings under "accounts". But when I configured Gmail with the other 5 email accounts, they are added in the "accounts" section. They become part of the environment, not just email addresses in Gmail. As a result, every %^&* thing on Android is done in the context of any one of the email addresses. When I go to "Contacts", a bunch are in xxx@gmail.com, some are in yyy@gmail.com, some are in zzz@gmail.com. I never know where a new contact is going to end up. When I go to the Play store, it's the same thing - I have to choose one of the Google accounts. Same for Google News reader, Photos, etc. The list goes on and on. Everything is tied to an "account (email address). I'm not really interested in hearing how this is a "good thing", e.g. you can have all of your business contacts tied to your business email address, and all of your personal contacts tied to your personal email address. That's a simplistic view of the world. My contacts are not split along business/personal lines - they are used for travel, personal, shopping, etc. But that doesn't mean I want to download from the Play store or read news or whatever using my "shopping" email address (account) or my "travel" email address. I'm not asking you to explain or fix any of the above. It is what it is. It's just context for the remainder of this message. '''Thunderbird for Android Beta (TFA-B)''' I've been using Thunderbird on Windows for the last ~20 years and it's fantastic. Today I saw several articles about Thunderbird for Android Beta, so I downloaded it. I thought "now this will be much better than gmail". The first thing I did was delete all of my accounts from my phone except for the xxx@gmail.com account that ties it to Google. All of the email disappeared too, but that's ok (I won't go into details). So now my phone has only ONE Google account and I want to configure TFA-B with 5 other email addresses. So I did the following: (a) entered yyy@gmail.com (b) it recognized @gmail.com and configured all of the IMAP/SMTP stuff (c) then it said "We'll redirect you, to your email provider to sign in. You need to grant the app access to your email account" with a button that said "Sign up with Google" (d) when I clicked that button, it didn't prompt me for username/password to sign in. Instead it listed the following: Signed in to Google as xxx@gmail.com - manage your Google Account - add account to device - sign out and turn off sync None of the 3 choices were to sign into yyy@gmail.com as promised. (a) "manage" refers to the current xxx@gmail.com, so that's not it (b) "sign out and turn off sync" also refers to xxx@gmail.com (c) The only possible choice is "add account to device" and I don't want that! I just want to read email from yyy.com without it becoming entangled in the entire Google/Android system. It does say "Google - sign in with your Google account" and asks for the email address, but then the only option is "Create account", which goes right into the usual Settings -> Accounts part of Android to create the account. I thought TFA-B was just going to ask me to sign in to yyy.com (the same as I would sign in to banking for example). But no, I have to create a Google/Android account. Maddening. So this is not going to simplify things. Every email address I set up in TFA-B is going to be set up as a Google account at the Android "system" level, and they will all be choices in Contacts, Play Store, and several other places. That's not what I expected. I am SO disappointed. I know TFA-B will be good, but from this point of view, it's just as bad as Gmail. I'm guessing there is no choice, e.g. you can't set up an email address in an application like TFA-B without setting it up as an Android "account".' So now I have questions: 1. is it possible to set up an email address/account in TFA-B, without setting up an account in Google/Android? 2. if not, is this a restriction in Android, or are the developers just doing it that way so it works the same as Gmail? 3. why does Android have to do *everything* in the context of one of the email addresses that have been setup as formal "accounts"? Thanks for listening.