No disrespect to your question - it is fair and reasonable - but why is the top comment on a post about Thunderbird's Matrix integration essentially a tech support question about a completely unrelated thing in Thunderbird?

Because it's a niche feature barely anyone will use or is interested in using and so they have nothing to say that would be on topic. But, this being HN, people still use the post to piggyback on with their issues or requests regarding Thunderbird in general.

Actually, this happens faily often. Each time some popular project gets a post like "php 8 released", "net 6 released", typically, what should be discussed is the theme of the release, new features, changes etc., but what the top posts end up being is just people arguing how php is shit and java/kotlin is better than net yadda yadda. Seems to be natural in open discussions, also happens on Reddit.

Yup - "Reply with this identity when delivery headers match". Set it to something like "*@example.com", and you're good to go.

That needs more identities to be added in advance. Just like Apple Mail. I want to avoid that.

How else would that work, though? Thunderbird doesn't know what SMTP server and credentials to use without you telling it.

It knows the domain already and SMTP credentials are already saved.

I’ve already set creds for [email protected], [email protected] and pr course as usual I can reply, send new emails from these addresses.

But I should also be able to send emails/reply from pqrs/dfg/john/tom/ram/bond/bill/[email protected]. Of course reply will be automatic but sending new email might just require changing the from field.

It can have a setting that “if a from address identified isn’t already added as an identity, it should use the SMTP creds of matching domain”. It won’t work for something like Gmail, Outlook.com (I mean one anyway can’t have catch-all on these domains) but would work great for personal emails.

This is what I meant.

Because without such a feature - catchall feature is often rendered very limited. Even iCloud+ supports replying - id you’ve to send a fresh mail from a catchall/disposable (or service/provider/business specific) email address you’re out of luck.

My thunderbird has an option for “modify from …” which lets me write whatever I want. On mobile, can’t check exact text. I do remember I had to reggae a switch in the preferences to make that option appear, don’t remember which one - have been using it for years.

Just checked, it's called "Customize From Address ..."

Cool! Thank you! Works great. Just have to remember to get rid of my signature as it has all my personal contact info lol

Thunderbird has a mobile app as well? The website says it doesn’t.

I was away from my laptop on mobile writing the message, so I couldn’t check what the option was called on my laptop….

It used to work fine with an extension called Virtual Identity. That no longer works (hasn't been updated in a long time, and I'm not sure if it could be made to work again).

No it doesn't, you can use a wildcard.

Holy cow, I too have been looking for this for ages! *@my.domain in there and it works!

Thank you!

I feel like I had this working in Evolution once?

In reality I found that 99% of the time I only use aliases for receiving and filtering incoming email. On the one day a month I need to send from [email protected], I just sack up and add it as an account alias. Le sigh.

Of course, mutt does this right:

https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/wikis/MuttFaq/Header#how-t...

…but now there’s a new problem in that GitLab’s deep linking seems to be broken. Yay.

It’s not Thunderbird, but I do this in Fastmail (web or app) using their “masked email” feature. Replies come from the same alias created uniquely for my Netflix account.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/4406536368911-Ma...

You can do this without masked email too. I have a wildcard alias setup so *@mydomain.tld are accepted, and I have a wildcard sending identity *@mydomain.tld

If you have a sending identity that matches with the address the email was received, on the app and webui it will reply from that address.

Disclaimer: I work at Fastmail, but not on the webui or app.

Fastmail does SUCH a great job managing multiple addresses and domains. My favorite feature is the auto-BCC so that when I'm sending from a joint e-mail address I share with my wife, she always gets a copy.

Thanks, I didn't know this was an option. Turning on now. :)

I am a Fastmail customer for 2-3 years. That was the reason, why I switched to you guys!

I've been trying to decide if I should switch from GApps to Fastmail. This is the killer feature I wanted along with unlimited domains, looks like I'll be transferring over soon.

> I have a wildcard sending identity *@mydomain.tld

Uh. Neat, I’ve been adding aliases individually as I needed them.

I did that too when I used Fastmail, was a right pain, wish I'd known!

It never occurred to me to try a wildcard. I was getting sick of adding sending identities in fastmail. Thanks for the tip!

In case any Mutt users are interested, here’s how this can be accomplished.

    # When replying to an email, use the To: address of the original email as the
    # From: address in the reply (requires that the To: address be recognised by
    # Mutt as being one of my alternate addresses).
    set reverse_name

    # Regex to let Mutt know what other email addresses are used by me.
    alternates @example

I had been thinking of writing a script to dynamically create a file of alternative addresses from /etc/aliases but this isn’t necessary. There’s no need to individually list all my alternate addresses as – currently – all [email protected] and [email protected] addresses are me so it is enough to just match the `@example` regular expression.

Edit: For composing a new message (not a reply), I have this set:

    # When composing a message, edit the headers along with the message body.
    # This should make it easier to see that the correct From address is being used
    # and to fix this if necessary.
    set edit_headers

I'm just trying this add-on which seems to work, ReplyAsOriginalRecipientUp: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/reply...

That’s how always used Thunderbird. I can even switch identities when replying, if I want to do that. Also, you can have multiple identities for the same account, if you have aliases.

I can have identities in Apple Mail but that would mean dozens, hundreds of identities have to be added. Add netflix@mydomain, reddit@, hnyc@, amazon@,… and so on.

Except one or two main identities I don’t want to pre-add these emails. Because I’m aware it’s already possible at least in Apple Mail.

I do my email address like you. One of the things I was thankful for with Fastmail is that it does this automatically for me (sets the FROM address when I hit reply to whatever the receipt address was). I hate when you hit reply and your mail client sends it from the default address and then the recipient bounces it because it doesn't match anything in their records.

I have indeed heard about it and it’s on the radar but not having any trial is a bummer. Btw what’s that 600 email (alias?) limit?

Also, wouldn’t want to buy a domain just to try. On top of that they don’t allow domains on their starting paid tier (which already costs 4 times current paid mail host) and my email resource usage doesn’t warn more than that.

Can you please tell us how the UI is?

E.g. You registered on Reddit and just used a random/disposable/freshly thought of email address like “[email protected]”.

Now if you receive an email from Reddit or anybody on the email I guess you can just hit reply and it will be replied from that Email — for this you would have to come back to Fastmail app/dashboard ans add that “reddit@…” as an identity/email or you don’t have to as long as the domain matches (and of course it does, that’s how you received mail in the first place)?

And what if you’re not replying? You’re initiating an email to someone but suddenly want to use “[email protected]”? You can just set it at the time of sending the mail you this email address has to be added as an identity/alias?

You can choose it at time of either sending a new email or replying. From the sending identity drop down, pick *@kingcharles.tld, and then it will populate the From field with <@kingcharles.tld> and you type in front of the @ sign whatever you want, no prior setup.

>E.g. You registered on Reddit and just used a random/disposable/freshly thought of email address like “[email protected]”. >Now if you receive an email from Reddit or anybody on the email I guess you can just hit reply and it will be replied from that Email

Yes, that's exactly how it works. I just went and checked it. I have one catchall alias set up with a name of King Charles on *@kingcharles.tld. Anything that comes into that domain like [email protected] I can reply to and the FROM will be King Charles <[email protected]> without me having to do anything. [It actually shows it as three textboxes "King Charles", "reddit", "kingcharles.tld" you can edit]

I pay $5 a month which I consider a bargain.

Virtual identity was exactly what you are asking for

https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id

Unfortunately it seems to have been abandonded

Damn! It indeed is exactly that. And yes, that’s abandoned. But thanks anyway!

You can change the from address to whatever you want when you send an email.

In the "From" drop down, you can choose any of your existing addresses or to customise it.

It feels to me that the problem is that email addresses are considered to be the identity. In your (and mine!) case, the domain is our identity, and the individual addresses are just different inboxes. Email clients need an option for that.

You don't need an add-on for that. I have a plain TB 91 setup with three identies configured for three different mail servers. When replying I can choose from the identities, and in the drop down there is another option "Customize From Address" which enables editing the address without creating another identity. It's a bit hidden, but should be there without an add-on. Doesn't work for new mails though, in this case the option is there but disabled.

GP (and I) don't want to configure multiple 'identities' though. I (and probably GP) create new email addresses 'on the fly', for a specific shop I order from once say, and if there's something I need to reply to I want (possibly need from their CRM's perspective) to reply from the address they already have for me.

Embarrassingly largely for this reason, I wrote my own client. (Good fun though, and not the only reason.)

I would love such a feature too. currently I have to either add a ton of identities or do a lot of unnecessary manual copy and pasting.

AFAIK, you can edit the from field for fresh emails, when using the user-defined-from-option below your identities. Nevertheless, when you have a conversation, it would be much easier if there would be an option to use the recipients address.

> And also writing fresh emails from specific emails addresses maybe by easily editing the “from” field.

that it has.

Firefox Relay solves this by giving you a [email protected] for the Reply-To. Works great for me for a dollar a month.

But of course I understand the desire to selfhost such a solution.

If you don't add them in advance, how could it tell the difference between your addresses, and a mailing list, or if there are multiple addresses.