I’ve been using Thunderbird for many years and it’s one of the main programs on my PC.
I’ve created a method of organizing emails in which I have emails stored in folders, sub-folders, more sub-folders, in other words, “a world of folders” and I’m so used to the layout of TB that it’s an essential program, but if I can’t change the colors of certain emails, I’ll have to use another email program and, possibly, I’ll keep TB as my main program and another program as an alternative for reading some emails.
I’m trying to follow the information that all the users have given me, to try to change TB and find and/or alternative program for the emails that I can read, but which are few.
For example, I use the gmail APP on Android and I feel completely lost when searching for my emails because I can’t see the path of all the subfolders. I know it’s a mistake for me to use this method of storing emails, but I’ve been using the same method at work with Outlook for many years and the big problem comes down to these items:
Jorge: just adding a sidenote here–there’s a fork of Thunderbird called Betterbird. I’m trying it out as I experiment with the new Fedora. It might be worth your time.
I’ve already tested Dark reader, but it changes the color of all the emails and I only wanted to change the colors of the emails that fail me. For this case, I think I have to change the CSS as suggested by Neville, which I’m still looking for.
There are only a few emails that I can’t read and possibly I’ll use another email client to read them and, if I get used to it, I’ll switch email clients, I really don’t know what to do yet.
Thank you
╭─x@titan ~/bin ‹main*›
╰─➤ sudo apt install geany
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
linux-headers-6.4.6-76060406 linux-headers-6.4.6-76060406-generic linux-image-6.4.6-76060406-generic linux-modules-6.4.6-76060406-generic
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
geany-common
Suggested packages:
libvte9 doc-base
The following NEW packages will be installed:
geany geany-common
0 to upgrade, 2 to newly install, 0 to remove and 37 not to upgrade.
Need to get 3,298 kB of archives.
After this operation, 12.1 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
As previously stated - I don’t use a “fat client” - I just use Gmail’s quasi-functional web UI - but I prefer Geany to Thunderbird…
Hi Alfred,
Thanks for the suggestion.
I tested before creating the thread and changed all emails and plugins, for example google calendar.
Changing the color on these settings doesn’t solve the issue
Thank you
I’ve been using Thunderbird in both Windows 11 and Solus linux (I dual-boot). I have had email messages that look like the screenshot (above), so I went into the Thunderbird settings - the general section, scroll down to ‘Fonts and colors’, then click the ‘Colors’ button (to the right)
In the Text and colors dialog, under Text and Background (left), I click the black color box next to Text to open the Colors dialog, then I click on White (bottom-right corner of the Basic Colors section of the Colors dialog - click OK to close it) to choose white text (the black box is white now). Next, I click the white color box next to Background to open the Colors dialog, then I click on Black (bottom-left corner of the Basic Colors section of the Colors dialog - click OK to close it) to choose a black background (the white box is black now). Near the bottom of the Colors dialog, there is an option ‘Override the colors specified by the content with my selections above:’. The default selection is ‘Only with high contrast themes’. Click that button and choose ‘Always’. Finally, click OK to close the Colors dialog and save your changes.
After making the above changes, see what my email notifications from It’sFOSS look like now:
Update: The ‘defaults’ I mention, and the colors dialog information I described here was for Windows 11, but I have been able to perform the same customizations in Thunderbord on Linux as easily. I have also customized Firefox on Linux using similar settings for colors, et-al.
Hi Ernie,
sorry for my late reply.
Thanks for the suggestion and it works. However, it changes the entire content of Thunderbird, I’ll explain: I use the Google Calendar plugin and this method of changing the colors of Thunderbird changes the colors of Google Calendar as well.
What I want to do is just change some of the colors of the emails that I can’t read, which I might be able to do by changing the CSS.
I haven’t had much time to spend at the PC, so I haven’t made any further progress in researching the corresponding CSS or testing the other alternative programs that you all recommended.
This is an exaggerated example of how TB changes all the colors:
I use colors in Google Calendar for certain events and the “always” function removes the colors completely
I know I’m asking too much, but there has to be a less drastic way for TB to change the colors.
As soon as possible, I’ll resume testing and give you feedback
I kinda hate how the main distros I use, or tried recently (Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Mint), insist on giving me Thunderbird - I ain’t got no use for it and first thing I do is remove it from my dock
I find Thunderbird very useful when accessing Newsgroups, using a fake e-mail address,thus avoiding spam
Hi,
First of all, I’d like to thank all the users who have helped me in this thread.
After several tests, I still think Thunderbird is the best email client for me.
The other programs are good, but for me to switch email clients, I would switch to the browser.
One of my problems with Thunderbird and why this thread came about was that I couldn’t change the color of certain emails, but with Neville’s information, I can change Thunderbird the way I want.
I’ll explain step by step what you need to do if any of you need to customize Thunderbird:
In the Application Basics table, look for the Profiles field and click on the about:profiles link;
The About Profiles tab will open. In this tab, in the Profile: default-default table, look for the Root Directory field and click on the Open Directory button ( this image is just an example);
Create the chrome folder and the userContent.css file:
In the profile, if it doesn’t exist, create the chrome folder;
Inside the chrome folder, create the userContent.css file if it doesn’t exist.Screenshot from 2023-12-18 08-04-23
Find the CSS code you want to change:
Select Devtools (CTRL+SHIT+I);
The CSS code can be found using the Pick button (1) in Devtools,hovering the cursor over the area we want to analyze (2), find the CSS style (3) and property to change (4):
Write the following code to change the background color of the blockquote to pastel yellow and font color to black:
blockquote {
background-color: #FDFD96 !important;
color: black !important;
}
Reboot Thunderbird;
After the change: (edited)
Not disregarding everyone’s suggestions, I’ll have to mark Neville’s suggestion as the solution.
Once again, thank you very much.
EDIT:
Note: You can do the same with the Thunderbird theme, by creating the userChrome.css file inside the same chrome folder, and changing the CSS you want to change in the same way as the blockquote example how to change the menubar to red:
Find the CSS corresponding to the menu toolbar, in this case it’s toolbar#toolbar-menubar:
P.S.: I used the pastel yellow and red colors only as examples, so that they would stand out in the demonstration images. As an example, here is a link to 2 sites where you can find out the names of the colors and the corresponding hexadecimal values:
I use Protonmail: the bridge, the drive, the password app, etc. BUT, what they have called an “app” for Linux is no better than running an app from the browser (it’s electron) and so you cannot, for example, split email addresses. I have 8 email addresses and 4 of them are our business email accounts to individuals. It is an absolute “must” to have those inboxes separate from each other.
And as indicated in this thread, forget having the inboxes/emails different colors, which I also use to be able to differentiate the inboxes at a glance in the narrow sidebar that holds the account names (which can be quite long).
Hopefully, now that they gave apps to Windows & Mac, they can focus on getting Linux one that has all the functionality of popular mail apps like Thunderbird.
