Any of these security features can take advantage of smartcards with the installation of additional extensions. It also offers inbuilt support for secure email with digital signing and message encryption through OpenPGP (using public and private keys) or S/MIME (using certificates). Thunderbird provides security features such as TLS/SSL connections to IMAP and SMTP servers. Thunderbird does not yet support SMTPUTF8 (RFC 6531) or Email Address Internationalization. With contributors all over the world, Thunderbird has been translated into more than 65 languages, although email addresses are currently limited to ASCII local parts.
The source code is freely available and can be compiled to be run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems. Ports for older versions available for OS/2 (including ArcaOS and eComStation). Releases available on the primary distribution site support the following operating systems: Thunderbird runs on a variety of platforms. For example, POP3 folders are subject to filesystem design limitations, such as maximum file sizes on filesystems that do not have large-file support, as well as possible limitations of long filenames, and other issues. There is basic support for HTML template messages, which are stored in a dedicated templates folder for each account.Īs with any software, there may be limitations to the number and sizes of files and objects represented. The Insert > HTML menu provides the ability to edit the HTML source code of the message. Certain special formatting like subscript, superscript and strikethrough is available from the Format menu. The delivery format auto-detect feature will send unformatted messages as plain text (controlled by a user preference). Thunderbird provides a wysiwyg editor for composing messages formatted with HTML (default). Since version 38, Thunderbird has integrated support for automatic linking of large files instead of attaching them directly to the mail message. Mork was due to be replaced with MozStorage in Thunderbird 3.0, but the 8.0 release still uses the Mork file format. Thunderbird also uses Mork and (since version 3) MozStorage (which is based on SQLite) for its internal database. As of August 2019 "there are still many bugs", so this is disabled by default.
Extensions and themesĮxtensions allow the addition of features through the installation of XPInstall modules (known as "XPI" or "zippy" installation) via the add-ons website that also features an update functionality to update the extensions. Thunderbird incorporates a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on the included address book, and can also understand classifications by server-based filters such as SpamAssassin. Thunderbird provides basic support for system-specific new email notifications and can be extended with advanced notification support using an add-on. On Linux-based systems, system mail ( movemail) accounts were supported until version 91.0. Features such as quick search, saved search folders ("virtual folders"), advanced message filtering, message grouping, and tags help manage and find messages. Thunderbird manages multiple email, newsgroup, and news feed accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Additional features are available from extensions. Thunderbird is an email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat ( XMPP/ IRC) client with personal information manager (PIM) functionality, inbuilt since version 78.0 and previously available from the Lightning calendar extension.