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Building a Thunderbird extension
Step-by-step explanation on how to build an extension for Thunderbird.
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  1. Thunderbird — created by Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox — has been a popular free email client with a loyal following over the years, despite threats of halting updates and further development of the application.
  2. Mar 09, 2021 Thunderbird includes tabbed e-mail, new search tools and indexing, smart folders, support for Firefox's Personas, a simplified setup wizard, and robust junk protections that include phishing.
  3. Thunderbird is now part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. Portions of this content are ©1998–2021 by individual contributors. Portions of this content are ©1998–2021 by individual contributors.

The following documentation provides help for creating extensions for the Thunderbird email client. There are similarities with Firefox extensions, but there are also differences that may confound the starting Thunderbird developer. This documention series focuses on Thunderbird.

Excellent mail client from the makers of Firefox. Thunderbird is a desktop email client, an alternative to Microsoft's Outlook, from the developers of Firefox. Thunderbird is Mozilla's award winning and free solution to manage your mail more efficiently.

Need personalized help? See Community / Communications.

Warning: This content is for older versions of Thunderbird. Much of it may no longer be relevant. See developer.thunderbird.net for newer information.

Getting started with Thunderbird

A brave, young developer wants to develop an add-on for Thunderbird. These links to help through this journey.

  • Start by reading the tutorial and learn how to build a Thunderbird extension. Also see Thunderbird 57-60 add-ons guide for changes introduced in Thunderbird 60.
  • Read about the main windows to learn about « thread pane », « preview pane », and « folder pane ».
  • Play with a demo add-on that exercises some more advanced Thunderbird-specific features
  • Want to do even more? Don't reinvent the wheel: steal from the thunderbird-stdlib project (doc here). Functions for dealing with messages (delete, archive, change tags, etc.) are included. MailUtils.js.
  • Haven't found what you need? Read the Thunderbird how-tos; they contain many recipes for things extensions want to do.
  • Still stuck? Ask in a community communication channel on the right.
  • Feeling really brave? Read the source using a fancy interface; you can often find tests that demonstrate what you're trying to achieve.

The Gloda database

Thunderbird has a subsystem called Gloda. Gloda stands for « Global Database », and creates Thunderbird-wide relations between objects. Gloda provides concepts such as Conversations, Messages, Identities, Contacts. All these concepts are related : a Conversation contains Messages which are linked to Identities (from field, to field) which are themselves part of a Contact: indeed, a contact has multiple identities.

Typical use cases for Gloda: find all messages whose subject matches [search term], find all messages from [person], find all messages in the same thread as [a given message], find all messages involving [person], etc. etc.

Gloda is extremely powerful and is used heavily by add-ons such as Thunderbird Conversations. Learn more about Gloda:

  • an overview of Gloda
  • how to create your first message query and read the gloda examples
  • Gloda internals: Gloda debugging, Gloda indexing

More Thunderbird-specific links

Some links may be out of date, but they still provide valuable information on the codebase.

  • Developer reference docs:
    • STEEL library (obsolete as of Thunderbird 52, use https://github.com/protz/thunderbird-stdlib)
  • Useful newsgroup discussions (anything that's very old should be regarded suspiciously, because there has been significant API rewrite over the past years making most techniques considerably easier)
  • Thunderbird API docs (mostly a collection of out-of-date pages, relevance is rather dubious)
  • Thunderbird developer release notes - changes in the recent Thunderbird updates affecting add-on developers. Thunderbird 5 for developers has important information on MsgHdrToMimeMessage which is a central piece of code.

General links

Community / Communications

Thunderbird specific :

More general :

Related Topics

XUL, JavaScript, XPCOM, Themes, Developing Mozilla

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Firefox Thunderbird Windows 10

This tutorial will help you set up the Mozilla Thunderbird™ e-mail client to work with your e-mail account.

Mozilla Firefox Thunderbird Download

To Set Up Your E-mail Account in Mozilla Thunderbird

  1. In Mozilla Thunderbird, from the Tools menu select Account Settings.
  2. Select Email account, and then click Next.
  3. Enter your name and e-mail address.
  4. Select POP or IMAP as the type of incoming server you are using. Your incoming server is pop.secureserver.net for POP, or imap.secureserver.net for IMAP. Click Next.
  5. Enter your e-mail address for the Incoming User Name, and Outgoing User Name. Click Next.
  6. Enter a name for your email account and click Next.
  7. Verify your account information and click Finish.
  8. In the Account Settings window, select Outgoing Server listed below your new account.
  9. Type smtpout.secureserver.net for the Server Name and change the Port setting to 80.

    10. NOTE: 'smtpout.secureserver.net' is an SMTP relay server. In order to use this server to send e-mails, you must first activate SMTP relay on your e-mail account. Log on to your Manage Email Accounts page to set up SMTP relay. If you do not have SMTP relay set up and your Internet Service Provider (ISP) allows it, you can use the outgoing mail server for your Internet Service Provider. Contact your Internet Service Provider to get this setting.

  10. Select Use name and password and enter your e-mail address. Thunderbird will ask you for your password the first time you try to send mail. Click OK.

Firefox Thunderbird For Android

NOTE: As a courtesy, we provide information about how to use certain third-party products, but we do not endorse or directly support third-party products and we are not responsible for the functions or reliability of such products. Thunderbird™ is a trademark of the Mozilla Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved.