Betterbird is a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird, Thunderbird on steroids, if you will.
Betterbird for Flatpak installation instructions are available by clicking here to visit the Betterbird app page on Flathub.
In order to migrate from pre-exisiting Thunderbird flatpak installation and preserve all settings please copy or move entire
~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird
folder into
~/.var/app/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/.thunderbird
When starting Betterbird for the first time, check if a Thunderbird language pack is installed (that has been migrated with your profile) and remove it.
In order to migrate from pre-exisiting non-flatpak Thunderbird installation and preserve all settings please copy or move entire
~/.thunderbird
folder into
~/.var/app/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/.thunderbird
When starting Betterbird for the first time, check if a Thunderbird language pack is installed (that has been migrated with your profile) and remove it.
In order to migrate from pre-exisiting non-flatpak Betterbird installation and preserve all settings please copy or move entire
~/.thunderbird
folder into
~/.var/app/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/.thunderbird
In case Betterbird opens a new profile instead of the existing one, run:
flatpak run eu.betterbird.Betterbird -P
then select the right profile and tick "Use the selected profile without asking on startup" box.
The Betterbird flatpak ships all language packs that are currently available for Betterbird. Flatpak installs a selection matching the user configuration that has been set with flatpak config --set languages
and flatpak config --set extra-languages
, defaulting to the system language. Thunderbird language packs do not work with Betterbird, so do not attempt to install them.
In case the localization of your Betterbird is incomplete, check if a Thunderbird language pack is installed (e.g. after migrating your profile from Thunderbird to Betterbird) and remove it.
(#75) To enable the experimental Wayland backend (assuming the desktop session runs under a Wayland):
eu.betterbird.Betterbird
flatpak the --socket=wayland
permission, e.g. by using Flatseal.flatpak override --env=MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 eu.betterbird.Betterbird
to enable the Wayland backend.(#51) For Smartcard support you need at least Flatpak 1.3.2.
(#263) Thunderbird does not use 'Portals' for file access everywhere leading to an inconsistent user experience. For example:
flatpak -compose "attachment='file:///home/username/file.txt'"
works only for files in a limited set of folders./run/user/1000/doc
. (This one is actually a consequence of using the Portals mechanism, but can also be avoided by applying the work around below.)You can work around this issue by giving the Betterbird flatpak access to your complete home directory
flatpak run --filesystem=home:rw eu.betterbird.Betterbird
every time.filesystem=home
permission using the Flatseal app or by running flatpak override --user --filesystem=home eu.betterbird.Betterbird
(once is enough). Caveats: Once Betterbird has access to your home directory, it will use the profile in ~/.thunderbird
instead of ~/.var/app/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/.thunderbird
. Meaning that in order to keep using your current profile, you will have to move it to ~/.thunderbird
after applying the work-around. Make sure that Betterbird is closed while moving the profile!
(#123) Opening Profile Directory doesn't work: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1625111
For issues related to the flathub package for Betterbird, please check the issue tracker for this repository if the issue has already been reported and open a new issue otherwise.
For bugs concerning Betterbird itself, please read www.betterbird.eu/support/ before creating a bug report in the Betterbird issue tracker. Here is an abridged version of the bug reporting guidelines: