Thunderbird has long been an app that’s been famous for looking rather utilitarian. However, that started to change with last year’s major Thunderbird 102 update, and now Mozilla is continuing its overhaul with the release of Thunderbird 115.
Contrary to Firefox, the Mozilla-made email client has always taken the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra, something that was increasingly meaning that other email clients were looking and feeling more modern. While the Thunderbird team didn’t really care about it before, it launched an all-out effort to modernize the client, something that started with the adoption of the K-9 Mail client on Android and its intentions to ultimately turn it into a mobile version of Thunderbird. Its biggest update in years, however, is also a solid effort in that direction.
Thunderbird version 115, codenamed Supernova, has been coming for some time. The update launched in beta last month, letting users check out the next big thing for Thunderbird. It’s expected to start rolling out to everyone today, though.
The update has a UI that looks much more modern and similar to other modern email clients, with a modernized “card view” that will show the content of the email to the right side of the window rather than below the list of emails. There’s also a much more improved address book, sortable folder modes, and an easy view that lets you access tags easily. Also modernized is the calendar view, which will also feel easy to use if you’ve ever used a modern calendar app in recent times.
The result here is an app that actually feels modern, leaving the old Thunderbird experience, and its mid-to-late-2000s look, behind and bringing things up to the current decade. And the Thunderbird team says that the experience should continue to be improved in subsequent updates, as there are still many things in the pipeline that weren’t included in this update.
You can download Thunderbird from the official website. The new update doesn’t appear to be live just yet, but Mozilla has confirmed it will start rolling out later today after it was delayed from the planned Monday release.
Source: Mastodon, Thunderbird Release Notes
