Thunderbird for Android Community Forum

My alumni email account is hosted on Microsoft 360. My email address is xxx@alumni.caltech.edu, but the actual login user name is xxx@alumni.caltech.onmicrosoft.com. When I try to log in with Thunderbird for Android the user name is automatically set to my email address rather than the username specified in the incoming server settings. This field cannot be changed and it prevents me from logging in. Please help, and thank you for all of your fine work.

-->BoB

I can't find clear information about syncing my Hotmail email account contacts to my Pixel 7a Android phone using Thunderbird email client for Android.

Is that possible? If not, will it be coming?

Thanks - Doug

Can I build my own version of Thunderbird for Android from the Github source? There is a (ridiculous) shortcoming in Thunderbird and also K-9 that seems trivial to fix. Indeed, K-9 does occasionally fix it, only to remove the fix in subsequent versions.

I have some experience with creating Windows applications from Github code, but have no idea how to build an Android app ...

Thanks for any thoughts.

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.

First off, thank you very much for creating the Android version of your email program. I am thrilled to death! I use the Unified View for all my accounts and right now all I can see is a little vertical color bar on the left side identifying which account the email is coming into. I would like to see a larger icon or some other larger identifier. Is there a setting that I'm missing to fix that, or is that a setting that has yet to be created? Please let me know. Thank you, and thank you for your hard work!

I've tried to use K9 mail and Thunderbird for Android, and with both have had issues sending an email or replying to one and having my email dropped without any notice. I've found that this happens all the time when I send to my own Gmail account. I can send from Tbird for Android to another of my own domains on Hostgator. I can send from my desktop version of Thunderbird to my android version, and to Gmail. Even if I import the desktop configuration to Android, I can't send from it to Gmail, and no notice of failure comes back. Any ideas?

After following the QR process for my email accounts import into Thunderbird for Android (importing from Thunderbird for Windows) only one account is showing all folders. Gmail and Outlook and Yahoo are only showing Outbox, while my Apple email is showing all folders, immediately after importing, none were showing. A full day later, only Apple shows and all others are still showing only Outbox. Apart from removing the app and trying again, any thoughts on why this is happenning?

Hi :)

I just wanted to provide info about an issue I'm having using Thunderbird. It's been present in past iterations since I installed a few months ago (before the rebrand), and I thought I'd mention it.

I'm finding that in dark theme, some text is unreadable due to low contrast (dark text on dark background). I am imagining the email likely has css/html clashing with my preferences? These emails are the only thing I use outlook for these days, as they render okay in there.

I have included how the email appears in thunderbird, then outlook by way of comparison.

I hope this is helpful, I'm happy to provide any information I can. :) Thank you for keeping this email client going, I love using it. :)

Many thanks,

Adam

I have Thunderbird for Android installed on my phone, and Thunderbird Desktop on my laptop. When I delete an email on my phone, the deletion does not then occur automatically on the desktop version. How can I sync deletions?

Note:

• I'm using an Outlook account.
• Even if I restart the app on my phone or pull down to refresh my inbox, the deletion does not occur on my phone.
• Conversely, if I delete an email on my laptop, then the deletion will occur on my phone (after refreshing it).

I have K9 and Thunderbird mail clients for Android installed on my Motorola E series phone running Android 10. GMail and another institutional mail account (IMAP) have been configured on both mail clients. When I compose and send a mail from the institutional mail account from either mail clients, the sent mail is not copied to the sent folder (on the client nor the server), though the email gets sent to the recipients. Please help resolve this issue. Thank you for designing the wonderful mobile mail clients!

I just installed the Android mobile version of Thunderbird. I was wondering if it supports any form/method of SPAM filtering? If so, how do I access/use it?

TIA!

When I mark messages for deletion or other operations they are highlighted using a shade of gray which is almost indiscernible from the other gray shades used for messages in the message list. How can I change the highlight color? In K-9 it's pink and it stands out clearly.

Thunderbird for Android 8.0b1 Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G/Android 14/One UI 6.1

When I Export to Mobile on desktop, it generates a QR code, but the mobile app won't scan it even though it has permission. No matter how I position the phone, it won't scan. If I use the camera app, it scans but won't open in Tbird Mobile.

Pixel 8 Pro

When checked in the settings menu for active emails the option to mark an incoming email as SPAM does not appear as a choice in the drop down dialogue. Is this unavailable currently or is this broken as of this date 11-1-24?