Mozilla has unveiled Thunderbird 128.0, around a year to the day after its last major release. Thunderbird 128.0, codenamed Nebula, isn’t just a major new release in its own right, it also heralds a new era for Thunderbird.
Going forward, Thunderbird will adopt the same monthly-release cycle as Firefox, its browser sibling. As a result, Thunderbird 128.0 comes in two major flavours: regular release, and ESR for those who prefer less frequent major updates.
Nebula opens with what Mozilla describes as "revolutionary code improvements", which refer to its transition to Rust. This supports its move to the more frequent release schedule as well as promising "reinforced stability, stellar quality-of-life enhancements and visual refinements".
Behind the hype, users should find Thunderbird both more responsive and less prone to crashes. Visually noticeable improvements can be found in Thunderbird’s Cards View, which receives a design refresh that includes the cards’ height adjusting automatically based on user settings.
The program also claims better visual cues to aid menu navigation. These include a reorganised context menu, with a series of icons at the top providing convenient access to common tasks such as replying, marking as read and deleting emails.
The Folder pane also sees several improvements, with support for multi-folder selection restore alongside faster rendering and unified folder search – it should also be better at recalling message thread states.
There’s better integration with system themes – particularly on Ubuntu and Mint, while Windows users will now find that Thunderbird uses the native Windows notifications system.
Users also gain the ability to customise the colour of their account icons to make working with multiple accounts easier. The colours can be see in the From selection when composing new emails.
A comprehensive list of new features can be found in the Thunderbird release notes. As of now, upgrades from existing versions aren’t available – users must download the installer to install the program directly. This will detect any existing installations and upgrade them to the latest ESR release. Future releases will be based on the monthly rapid release schedule with the ESR channel receiving bug and security fixes only.
Thunderbird 128.0 ESR is available now for Windows, macOS and Linux. A portable Windows build should follow shortly.
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