I use it and feel like it's...fine. A tad slow, and doesn't have some basic features I'd like. But I haven't found any other non-browser clients that I like better than Thunderbird.

Yes, on desktop (macOS and Linux). It's not a speed demon but I trust it (on Linux I build from source).

On Android I use Fastmail's mobile client, but I'm thinking of trying the new mobile Thunderbird there too.

yes i exclusively use thunderbird to check my email

I think it's definitely a minority.

I use it to follow three Gmail accounts in parallel, since the web version is a PITA to deal with that scenario. Getting access to my local archive is a bonus point.

I use it for my email. It does exactly what I need it to, works across several platforms. Is Open Source.

Web based email is a disease.

What don't you like about it?

The handling, the speed, the unavailability of functions and the idea about it.

Unconvincing at best, but most likely not even true.

I used it at a previous job that didn't have a web option for email, but for me the killer feature was that it was the only mainstream newsgroup client (the job delivered error notifications via newsgroups).

> the job delivered error notifications via newsgroups

Well, now I've heard everything. This is either peak greybeard creativity, or that was a thing in like 1992 and a system has been left alone for 30+ years to just do its 90s thing. Either way I kind of love it.

Haha probably peak greybeard - the founder and his two friends had been doing Internet stuff since the mid 1990s but the code was much newer. I assume the system worked so they kept doing it. Everything was on-prem too so I guess was an easy option to make logs accessible to everyone without paying for a service.

I like not looking at ads when reading my email, so I use it. If it added local AI based drafting assistance, I would check out that feature. I don't care about FF Send, but might use it a couple times a year.

Don't most people use an ad blocker?

No, I think people who use ad blockers are a minority. And it's not getting better with Chrome/Chromium switching to Manifest v3 which has significantly worse support for ad blockers.

I do, but Yahoo for example includes ads in the inbox itself, disguised to look like new messages.

At my (small) workplace we all use Thunderbird, and I use it for my personal email as well.

A good desktop client, once configured, works a lot better than web-based email clients, especially (but not only) when you have different email accounts that you want to use in the same interface.

Thunderbird lets the user change the UI and hide almost every single element of it. I don't like clutter.

With that feature I could also help an elderly friend after Microsoft abruptly replaced the easy to use Windows Mail with a mess that they didn't even bother to translate into other languages.

> I would guess 99% of people use their browser [for email]

Your comments reveal a major blind spot. 99% of people (or whatever) are using dedicated email clients instead of webmail. They do everything on their phone.

> Do people still use Thunderbird client? I would guess 99% of people use their browser.

Count me as one. It's nice to have a single local application that is set up for around 5 different accounts on two different providers.

I also like the immediacy of search on the local data. When I search for something I don't want to see a spinning busy-beachball indicator.

Virtually nobody uses mail via web browser on phones, the primary computing device of the world right now.

> the primary computing device of the world right now.

Whether this is true or not depends a lot on which the bubble is that you live in.

If people are using their phones then they are using their email service's app to check their mail. Not Thunderbird.

I do mostly for work (Alpine does not work out that nice if everyone is sending Exchange-blended tag soup), and a lot of my friends do, many of them (non-IT) engineers.

Not only do I use it for my non-primary email accounts, but I use it for NNTP too. :)