Re:Our plans for Thunderbird on Android
by NonNefarious on Monday June 13, 2022 @03:13PM
(#31730230)
After not trying Thunderbird since the '90s (when I dismissed it with prejudice for having no way to export, and thus copy between computers, all the filters you'd set up), I was forced to after discovering the unusably defective shitshow that is Outlook today.
I was pleasantly surprised by the experience of installing and configuring Thunderbird on two new computers I bought for my parents. Pretty much seamless, and I kept waiting for it to fail it furiously downloaded all 15,000+ messages in each of their AOL In-boxes. Nope. It worked fine, unlike Outlook and whatever the atrocious POS client Microsoft is including with Windows these days.
- Full encryption integrated into the client for all data (e.g., I don't want Windows Search able to index the mail so someone has access when the client is closed/unencrypted; I also remember testing Thunderbird years ago and was able to go into the individual unencrypted .eml files [I think that's what they were] and read the messages without having Thunderbird opened)
- Full local sync with Android/iPhone (i.e., home WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB cable); it still amazes me that Thunderbird still doesn't have this built-in
- Xobni-like functionality (e.g., showing all emails and attachments to/from sender when clicking on an email, keyword searches); yes, I know the plugin is still available but it doesn't work properly with current Outlook versions (and no plugin like this exists for Thunderbird)
But if the upgraded K-9 also got other integrated Thunderbird functionality (e.g., calendar, contacts, tasks), that would be especially amazing as I could then move away from Google (which I'd also LOVE to do). For example, the Notes field in Google's base Contacts app is limited to 1000 characters. That means I can only sync Outlook to Android one-way (else I lose longer notes when they sync back).
To be able to move away from Microsoft and Google to open source... now that's a future worth dreaming about.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31683214#31686186