The team behind the open source email client has released the long-awaited Thunderbird 128 to the public. The version is not yet available as an update, only as a direct download from the official website.
You can upgrade from current stable versions of Thunderbird to the new release, but need to run the installer to do that.
As far as system requirements are concerned, Thunderbird 128 won’t run anymore on pre-Windows 10 or macOS 10.15 devices. Users who use add-ons or customizations may run into issues, but this is the case for every new major release. It may be a good idea to wait a few release cycles as many of the issues may have been sorted out by then.
The official release notes are quite long, which is to be expected.
Thunderbird 128: a quick rundown
While there have been a good number of changes, Thunderbird 128 looks and behaves for the most part like Thunderbird 115. This is good for consistency.
There are differences though. UI density, for example, affects the multi-message view now as well. I prefer to use compact, as it shows more messages and information on the screen at the same time.
You can change density and other layout-related preferences by selecting View of the menu at the top.
On Windows, Thunderbird is now using the native notifications system. There is also support for operating system accent colors and custom account colors are now shown in the form field when composing a message.
If you want to display full names and email addresses of all recipients in a message list, you can do so now with the new preference mail.addressDisplayFormat. This needs to be set in the advanced configuration, which you may access via Tools > Settings > Config Editor.
The new version improves its OpenPGP implementation as well.
Closing Words
Thunderbird 128 looks like a polished version of Thunderbird 115. The big update does not interfere with the layout nearly as much as the last major update of the email client.
Many of the changes are cosmetic in nature, but these do not get in the way either. This may be different for users who use lots of add-ons or customization options, as extensions need to be updated to remain compatible with the new Thunderbird release.
Again, most users may want to wait a couple of months before they start considering upgrading to the new releases.
What about you? Do you use Thunderbird? What is your take on the new Thunderbird 128?
Can’t since I’m running Windows 8.1 so end of story on that score. I didn’t update to v115 either because I didn’t like the layout and still have v102.15.1 installed. Works alright though so I’m not bothered.
Any unknown mails that arrive get the Ctrl-U treatment and if that data looks dodgy they get zapped without being opened.