SOLVED: Thunderbird 60.7 doesn't show relative dates anymore
Apologies if this was covered somewhere else, but I've tried to search for the answer, and I can't find any.
I recently upgraded my OS, and I'm now using Thunderbird 60.7.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Before I upgraded, Thunderbird would show dates (for example, in the date column for emails) for dates that were yesterday in a format something like "Yesterday, 11:37 AM". (I'm not sure what version this was, but it could have been very old.)
But now, Thunderbird just shows the regular date (like "6/17/19, 11:37 AM"). Is there a setting I need to adjust to show relative dates?
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Wšě wotmołwy (6)
The only way I know to show mail received 'Yesterday' is to select View/Sort by/Date and Grouped By Sort.
sfhowes said
The only way I know to show mail received 'Yesterday' is to select View/Sort by/Date and Grouped By Sort.
I appreciate the suggestion, but that's not what I'm asking for. I'm trying to figure out why the behavior of the text displayed in the date column changed.
TB generally applies the date format set in the operating system, although there are some Config. editor options. In the case of Linux, the change you see may be due to the changes made by the maker of the distribution, and not present in the version of TB provided on thunderbird.net.
Do you know how Thunderbird gets that date format from the OS? Because AFAICT, Thunderbird isn't using any date format provided by my OS.
In particular, on Linux (or Ubuntu, at least--I probably shouldn't speak for all distros) running 'locale -k LC_TIME' on the command line lists all the date and time formats provided by the OS. On my machine, that gives:
abday="Sun;Mon;Tue;Wed;Thu;Fri;Sat" day="Sunday;Monday;Tuesday;Wednesday;Thursday;Friday;Saturday" abmon="Jan;Feb;Mar;Apr;May;Jun;Jul;Aug;Sep;Oct;Nov;Dec" mon="January;February;March;April;May;June;July;August;September;October;November;December" am_pm="AM;PM" d_t_fmt="%a %d %b %Y %r %Z" d_fmt="%m/%d/%Y" t_fmt="%r" t_fmt_ampm="%I:%M:%S %p" era= era_year="" era_d_fmt="" alt_digits= era_d_t_fmt="" era_t_fmt="" time-era-num-entries=0 time-era-entries="S" week-ndays=7 week-1stday=19971130 week-1stweek=1 first_weekday=1 first_workday=2 cal_direction=1 timezone="" date_fmt="%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y" time-codeset="UTF-8" alt_mon="January;February;March;April;May;June;July;August;September;October;November;December" ab_alt_mon="Jan;Feb;Mar;Apr;May;Jun;Jul;Aug;Sep;Oct;Nov;Dec"
However, in Thunderbird dates are currently presented as, e.g., "6/18/19, 9:36 AM". That doesn't match any of the formats listed above. (Even Thunderbird constructing its own combinations isn't a valid explanation, since none of those formats contain the field specifier for a two-digit year, "%y".)
Not being a Linux user, I can't say for sure how TB gets the date format. There is an option in Edit/Preferences/Advanced/General to switch from app locale to the regional locale, and other suggestions in the mozillazine article.
See also: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1670601&p=10417603#post10417603
I ended up writing my own extension to do this--you can find it at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/enhanced-date-formatter/