The first Thunderbird 130 beta release is out, and when running it on Linux there’s a very obvious new feature: a tray icon!
In the Thunderbird 130 beta release notes the ‘what’s new’ section lists “added Linux system tray icon”, and what’s mind-blowing about the addition is that it developers a feature request first filed on the Mozilla bug tracker a staggering 25 years ago!
Tray icons are a bit old hat, but they remain useful on systems that don’t handle background apps in an intuitive or familiar manner.
Thunderbird for Windows has a system tray icon/applet, but the e-mail client has not (to my knowledge) ever had one on Linux or macOS systems.
Over the years Linux users have relied on a multitude of workarounds, Thunderbird add-ons, and API-leveraging third-party apps, scripts, or extensions to get a functional Thunderbird tray menu (Birdtray being one I used in the past).
But times are changing.
A broader effort by Thunderbird developers aims to improve the e-mail client’s integration on Linux desktops by adding a system tray icon (StatusNotifierItem specification), and enhancing support for native notifications1.
The first Thunderbird 130 beta is available to download with a literal tray icon, but it doesn’t do much at present. This is the first beta of around 5/6 planned, and the tray icon has only just been added so it is far from finished, finalised, or functionally complete.
Minimise to tray, and some kind of ‘new message’ indicator (beyond notifications or a dock emblem in Ubuntu) are planned. I expect a GUI toggle to turn the icon off will be introduced to placate those who don’t want/need a tray icon for Thunderbird.
I’d also expect the literal tray icon to be finessed in time. In Beta 1 it’s a full-colour icon (and looks oversized in Linux Mint’s Cinnamon desktop), but most major Linux distributions and desktop environments prefer symbolic or desaturated tray icons.
So anyone planning on downloading the beta on the basis it has gained a tray icon MUST keep all of that in mind. The way this feature looks and behaves in Thunderbird 130 Beta 1 is not indicative of how it may work/look by time it arrives in a future stable ESR release.
Also, keep in mind that beta releases of anything in general are not recommended for mission-critical workloads, will contain bugs, show rough edges, offer incomplete features, performance quirks, and so on — use them with that understanding.
The tray ions feature in Thunderbird 130 beta is a work in progress. It is not (at the time of writing this) complete, finished, or finalised. You can track development and new functionality in future planned Thunderbird beta updates.
Thanks Sambot
- Which I hope will include action buttons in GNOME Shell notifications, e.g., ‘mark as read’ ↩︎