I don't get why Mozilla's designs are so ugly. It's 2026, everyone has beautiful designs and some browsers (Arc, Dia) are so gorgeous you don't want to work with anything else. And then this not-even-released mail app looks like old Bootstrap web apps. I used to love Mozilla for having some of the most beautiful designs. The era of Forefox OS and Firefox 4 with their beautiful beautiful designs and then they said no; threw out that beautiful dinosaur logo for whatever this ugly pointless one is and now look at their software. My eyes hurt for the amount of design problems in Firefox. Okay you made a bad one, at least start something new correctly.
I don’t understand people complaining about Firefox UI. It barely exists. There’s a url bar with some buttons in each side. If you use vertical tabs, another bar with tiny icons for each tab.
There’s so little chrome I can’t find any fault in it. It’s just grey, out of the way, as it should be.
There's too much chrome. There's no way that I've ever been able to find to remove the fat fixed message header in reading view to see more of the message.
I'm with you and honestly I think most people are. Frankly, I'm pretty certain that for 90% of users of you swapped chrome for Firefox, replacing the icons too, then people wouldn't notice. I'd wager 80% of HN users.
It's such a petty argument when everything is so hackable and Google is eating the internet. I wish people would put half the energy they use to complain to solve the things they are upset about.
Vertical tabs are only better because there is more horizontally space on a as screen and listing things vertical allows you to both garage the list size and keep a mental reference of what slot a tab was. And those tab headers don’t move because of resizing when the width fills up.
But horizontal tabs are still better. Not technically better or ascetically better. Some other immeasurable, indescribable better.
I don't like pickles. So what? No one is forcing me to eat them and no one is forcing you to use vertical tabs. They aren't even the default so wtf is the point of your comment?
Remember when Mozilla did a huge rebrand that introduced a new logo many people actually loved for its ingenuity, styling their name as moz://a? [1] And then, not very long after, they did another rebrand that resulted in… whatever they’ve got now? [2] Taking a step forward and then two steps back seems like a very Mozilla thing to do.
There is some praise but it's mostly the same complaints that come up whenever Mozilla gets mentioned on HN, it's awful, I can't believe they've done this, millions wasted etc.
Looking at the screenshots, I don’t have a problem with the aesthetics of the UI, but with how it’s wasting a lot of space. It feels like we could see more content on a small 4” smartphone screen 15 years ago: https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/R... (and that already felt a bit wasteful back then, where a different layout could almost double the number of items visible at once)
I'll throw my nickel to this comment. I use swaywm with i3bar, you literally can go lower with that taste but I'm at least aware and honest with my taste. Dia looks like ChatGPT web client. It's mediocre at best
Most people don't like Zen (or Arc). Which is fine. I'm a big keyboard person so I love it, especially with the vimium plugin. But sometimes people get confused at my browser because they don't know how to navigate. Which is understandable
What I like about Mozilla is they made a hackable browser so we can have things like Zen, WaterFox, or whatever floats your boat.
I was using Thunderbird on Android for years and keep using it on Linux, but it aged rather poorly.
Search is completely useless, it never-ever finds anything. Threads are supported, but their functionality is not configurable so whenever I lazily click on the complete thread (instead of opening it, scrolling down to the last item and clicking on it directly) it opens every message of the thread. Really nice functionality for large threads with 60+ emails!
So I am a bit skeptical why on earth they would increase their coverage when the already supported platforms lack decent UX.
Very much agree. I still use it on windows because nothing else seems much better, but there are a lot of things I feel are fairly basic/core features that just don't work right, I often find myself wanting to use the gmail web..
- Search
- Threads
- Windows integrated notifications/unread badge
- Syncing unread counts in folders
- Text/Email Editor
GMail search fundamentally has an advantage over a mobile email client as Google can and does maintain dedicated indexes for your email on their servers. While a mobile client could do the same, it's not really something that you want to do on a battery-powered device.
It would be a great thing for IMAP servers to do, but none of the major open source ones really take on that feature, and Google wants you in their web-client, so searches via IMAP are low-quality at best.
> While a mobile client could do the same, it's not really something that you want to do on a battery-powered device
Doesn't this feel like a perfect example of work done at 3AM when plugged in and (importantly) after the battery is fully charged? It won't be perfect, searching for an email in the afternoon that you received in the morning won't be in the index, but I generally don't need search for emails I received so recently anyways
I use it as well, and it's a turd of a program. However, the flipside is that nowadays, with AI, one can build addons very easily, to fill missing functionality.
It’s a turd of a program today, but it didn’t use to be. I bet that if you took one of the earliest versions from 20 years ago and fixed the security issues, you’d get a great email client, because that’s what Thunderbird once was and email itself has barely changed.
Thunderbird desktop has the expression-search-ng addon that is notoriously breaks on updates. Wonder why the team does not make search a priority cross platform.
I have used Aquamail https://www.aqua-mail.com/android since the mid 2009 on my android devices. It's been solid and it is super customizable. I think the only downside is they changed their payment model a while back and if you didn't buy it back then it costs monthly fee or a $99.99 for a lifetime license. I highly recomend it if you do a lot of email on your phone.
I use k9/thunderbird for private mail. But for my org's on prem exchange account I use nine folders, as I also want to sync calendar and contacts. (We have a davmail gateway but it has quirks)
Already did. Both should be essentially the same, different skins and some rather miner functional differences afaik. Using TB on Android and I agree with critics, like dysfunctional search etc
I am almost certain that the only reason (feature) I have Thunderbird desktop installed has no place in this iOS app – an editable FROM field. I am pretty sure of that.
Ah, just saw the coolest thing - an epic subheading:
> Designed for growth
Love it. There's no stopping this app now. Godspeed, Mozila/Thunderbird! Grow is the new word.
Editable from field is also the only reason I was using it with protonmail. I can't remember if it was a protonmail limitation or a Thunderbird one that meant I had to pre-add any email addresses before I could send any messages from them though.
Now I'm on fastmail, the from address is an input box that I can put anything into.
If your e-mail provider supports it, Customize From Address allows you to make a one-off minor alteration to your From address without having to create a new identity in Account Settings. For example, if your From address is John Doe <john@example.com> you may want to change it to John Doe <john+doe@example.com> or John <john@example.com>.
Maybe there's a demand for a more feature-rich mail client on iOS, perhaps syncing accounts and filters from the desktop app. But this doesn't seem to be that, at least not at this point.
It's impossible (other than mutual TLS) to do mfa on the native ios mail app without trusting a third party for one of your factors. Hopefully Thunderbird will support it...
Juggling multiple e-mail accounts in a single client, and I haven't found anything better - also haven't really had any major complaints, the desktoo app works perfectly for what I use it for.
I have seen this. Some devs actually write a pure swift ui app and still manage to make that look like anything but a pure switt ui app. Since the mothership is Mozilla I won't put is past them.
Much more than UIKit, SwiftUI enables the web front-end mentality that mandates no stone be left without a custom style. It's one reason that I'm not particularly fond of it.
(The bug is they do 'clever matching', so wedding matches weds, and too many emails you weds for wednesday, you can't say 'just show the word I ask you for')
If you sort by relevance it seems to prioritise the word you asked for? I searched "wedding" and the first few hundred results were all emails about actual weddings. It was only when I sorted by date I saw the "Wed" results.
There’s so little chrome I can’t find any fault in it. It’s just grey, out of the way, as it should be.
Edit: https://imgur.com/a/1I4gG22 tell me where the bad/ugly UI is.
It's such a petty argument when everything is so hackable and Google is eating the internet. I wish people would put half the energy they use to complain to solve the things they are upset about.
But horizontal tabs are still better. Not technically better or ascetically better. Some other immeasurable, indescribable better.
There is some praise but it's mostly the same complaints that come up whenever Mozilla gets mentioned on HN, it's awful, I can't believe they've done this, millions wasted etc.
With all due respect, what a low bar for beauty!
What I like about Mozilla is they made a hackable browser so we can have things like Zen, WaterFox, or whatever floats your boat.
A quick glance at their product and its literally just a clone/fork of chrome/chromium with AI-pilled features.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" holds true.
Search is completely useless, it never-ever finds anything. Threads are supported, but their functionality is not configurable so whenever I lazily click on the complete thread (instead of opening it, scrolling down to the last item and clicking on it directly) it opens every message of the thread. Really nice functionality for large threads with 60+ emails!
So I am a bit skeptical why on earth they would increase their coverage when the already supported platforms lack decent UX.
See Betterbird for reference and their blog posts, it sheds some more light on aforementioned weirdness.
Also see other comment in this thread mentioning how you can't search for "wedding". A bug that is 14 years now.
At this point I'm really considering trialing one of those two vibe coded clients recently shown here on HN.
- Search - Threads - Windows integrated notifications/unread badge - Syncing unread counts in folders - Text/Email Editor
It would be a great thing for IMAP servers to do, but none of the major open source ones really take on that feature, and Google wants you in their web-client, so searches via IMAP are low-quality at best.
Doesn't this feel like a perfect example of work done at 3AM when plugged in and (importantly) after the battery is fully charged? It won't be perfect, searching for an email in the afternoon that you received in the morning won't be in the index, but I generally don't need search for emails I received so recently anyways
Ah, just saw the coolest thing - an epic subheading:
> Designed for growth
Love it. There's no stopping this app now. Godspeed, Mozila/Thunderbird! Grow is the new word.
Now I'm on fastmail, the from address is an input box that I can put anything into.
Maybe there's a demand for a more feature-rich mail client on iOS, perhaps syncing accounts and filters from the desktop app. But this doesn't seem to be that, at least not at this point.
I also don't like that it renders PDF attachments. Just seems to be enabling scammers
For a company focused on privacy, I'd love GnuPG integrated into the mail app.
Title: Thunderbird for iOS: A First Look
What alternative do you suggest?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844
(The bug is they do 'clever matching', so wedding matches weds, and too many emails you weds for wednesday, you can't say 'just show the word I ask you for')