Yet another Hacker News

87 points mjorgers 1 hour ago 27 comments

astameteo 55 minutes ago | parent

I was using Thunderbird on Android for years and keep using it on Linux, but it aged rather poorly.

Search is completely useless, it never-ever finds anything. Threads are supported, but their functionality is not configurable so whenever I lazily click on the complete thread (instead of opening it, scrolling down to the last item and clicking on it directly) it opens every message of the thread. Really nice functionality for large threads with 60+ emails!

So I am a bit skeptical why on earth they would increase their coverage when the already supported platforms lack decent UX.

vangreen 51 minutes ago | parent

I have similar thoughts. What email client do you use on Android?

jamapy 46 minutes ago | parent

I use FairEmail in Android.

jdoss 42 minutes ago | parent

I have used Aquamail https://www.aqua-mail.com/android since the mid 2009 on my android devices. It's been solid and it is super customizable. I think the only downside is they changed their payment model a while back and if you didn't buy it back then it costs monthly fee or a $99.99 for a lifetime license. I highly recomend it if you do a lot of email on your phone.

karussell 22 minutes ago | parent

Isnt K-9 Mail supposed to join forces with Thunderbird? K-9 Mail works fine for me.

pizza234 40 minutes ago | parent

I use it as well, and it's a turd of a program. However, the flipside is that nowadays, with AI, one can build addons very easily, to fill missing functionality.

p-e-w 10 minutes ago | parent

It’s a turd of a program today, but it didn’t use to be. I bet that if you took one of the earliest versions from 20 years ago and fixed the security issues, you’d get a great email client, because that’s what Thunderbird once was and email itself has barely changed.

Dennip 39 minutes ago | parent

Very much agree. I still use it on windows because nothing else seems much better, but there are a lot of things I feel are fairly basic/core features that just don't work right, I often find myself wanting to use the gmail web..

- Search - Threads - Windows integrated notifications/unread badge - Syncing unread counts in folders - Text/Email Editor

secabeen 12 minutes ago | parent

GMail search fundamentally has an advantage over a mobile email client as Google can and does maintain dedicated indexes for your email on their servers. While a mobile client could do the same, it's not really something that you want to do on a battery-powered device.

It would be a great thing for IMAP servers to do, but none of the major open source ones really take on that feature, and Google wants you in their web-client, so searches via IMAP are low-quality at best.

atrokhymchuk 54 minutes ago | parent

apparently that is a native iOS application, I wonder whether they tried to use KMP to use same codebase with the android app

crossroadsguy 41 minutes ago | parent

I have seen this. Some devs actually write a pure swift ui app and still manage to make that look like anything but a pure switt ui app. Since the mothership is Mozilla I won't put is past them.

cosmic_cheese 22 minutes ago | parent

Much more than UIKit, SwiftUI enables the web front-end mentality that mandates no stone be left without a custom style. It's one reason that I'm not particularly fond of it.

bluescrn 46 minutes ago | parent

But why? What's the USP here?

Maybe there's a demand for a more feature-rich mail client on iOS, perhaps syncing accounts and filters from the desktop app. But this doesn't seem to be that, at least not at this point.

zmk5 44 minutes ago | parent

They have a paid email service now. This is likely for that and for other users who want a thunderbird-based, free e-mail client.

tiberious726 39 minutes ago | parent

It's impossible (other than mutual TLS) to do mfa on the native ios mail app without trusting a third party for one of your factors. Hopefully Thunderbird will support it...

CJefferson 46 minutes ago | parent

It's been 14 years since I reported you can't search for "wedding" in Bugzilla, have they ever fixed it, they hadn't last time I checked:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844

(The bug is they do 'clever matching', so wedding matches weds, and too many emails you weds for wednesday, you can't say 'just show the word I ask you for')

michelb 15 minutes ago | parent

That thread is both hilarious and sad. Incredible that nobody has forked the project simply to implement a working search.

crossroadsguy 37 minutes ago | parent

I am almost certain that the only reason (feature) I have Thunderbird desktop installed has no place in this iOS app – an editable FROM field. I am pretty sure of that.

Ah, just saw the coolest thing - an epic subheading:

> Designed for growth

Love it. There's no stopping this app now. Godspeed, Mozila/Thunderbird! Grow is the new word.

jaksmit 13 minutes ago | parent

what does being able to edit the from field enable you to do?

tredre3 7 minutes ago | parent

The official explanation is as follows:

    If your e-mail provider supports it, Customize From Address allows you to make a one-off minor alteration to your From address without having to create a new identity in Account Settings. For example, if your From address is John Doe <john@example.com> you may want to change it to John Doe <john+doe@example.com> or John <john@example.com>.

ChrisArchitect 31 minutes ago | parent

Suggest keeping "A first look" in the title for clarity that this isn't a full release

Title: Thunderbird for iOS: A First Look

HumblyTossed 21 minutes ago | parent

The Mail app that comes with iOS is plenty.

pmkary 10 minutes ago | parent

I don't get why Mozilla's designs are so ugly. It's 2026, everyone has beautiful designs and some browsers (Arc, Dia) are so gorgeous you don't want to work with anything else. And then this not-even-released mail app looks like old Bootstrap web apps. I used to love Mozilla for having some of the most beautiful designs. The era of Forefox OS and Firefox 4 with their beautiful beautiful designs and then they said no; threw out that beautiful dinosaur logo for whatever this ugly pointless one is and now look at their software. My eyes hurt for the amount of design problems in Firefox. Okay you made a bad one, at least start something new correctly.