How to even Thunderbird?

BraX3
1

Yeah, sounded crazy to me too.

So Thunderbird comes on the Brax3 and I can’t figure it out.

I’ve never used Thunderbird before so I figured I’d set it up.

When I click Get Started, I get to this page.

Screenshot_20251205-131336_Thunderbird
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Being “new to Thunderbird” I click “add an email account now”.

I assumed it would ask me to generate an email name but all I see is this “email address”.

Screenshot_20251205-131344_Thunderbird
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I’ve tried putting in existing email addresses I have in case its wanting a secondary account for backup, and I’ve tried making up a Thunderbird email.

It just keeps saying it “can’t configure”. Go figure.

Go configure!

Well, it does offer to let me “configure manually” but that is no help to me.

Can someone please tell me what I’m missing?

2

You need to have an email account already. The reason it’s asking for an email address is so it can attempt to configure at least some of the info for you. For example if you put [email protected], it would know you want to use gmail’s servers for incoming/outgoing, it knows how to set it up, etc. and would just need the password (it already has the username, because it’s the part in front of @gmail.com).

So step 1 is to already have an email address you want to use (I wouldn’t recommend gmail for obvious reasons, that was just an example of how the program works).

1 Like
3

Thanks. I have two others I use and I tried the tutanota but it just says it can’t configure.

I’ll try the proton mail and see what it does.

4

Okay. Now it will configure, but when I try to sign in with my password (stored in protonpass) I get errors…

Screenshot_20251205-144333_Thunderbird
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When I click retry it changes the port number but the message persists.

I turned off all blocking from iode and its the same.

5

I’m going to guess that the “can’t configure” error just means it can’t auto configure based off the email. I.e. it knows how to handle @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @majorisp.com, but not @customdomain.com or other email addresses that aren’t that popular. You should be able to go into custom configuration to set the incoming/outgoing (often the same, but not always) servers, security settings, username (often the same as your email address but not always), password, etc.

I’ll admit I haven’t setup Thunderbird manually on a phone, I use Betterbird (Thunderbird fork) and just used the qr code to automatically set it up in the Thunderbird app.

Re: your screenshot error. Again I don’t know exactly how proton is setup, but the /127.0.0.1 means it’s trying to connect to localhost…i.e. something on your phone. I am pretty sure that’s not correct.

2 Likes
6

When I expand the configuration found window it shows the servers are slightly different. As well as the incoming IMAP and outgoing SMTP.

I also see there’s no photo editing ability to redact my email or I’d post a pic.

7

OK, so don’t shoot me but… If you have a Tuta account, why don’t you use the Tutanota app on Fdroid? I use it and it works fine.

1 Like
8

I do. Mostly for stuff (people) I don’t want to use my proton mail for.

But I thought I’d try Thunderbird since it came with the phone.

Maybe I’d like to have a third email.

9

I have the paid version of Tuta and can have up to 15 email addresses; 10 I think being alias addresses. May not work for you, but I find it worth not having multiple free, single address accounts and matching issues.

2 Likes
10

I am not in a position to pay for a lot of services. But I get it. I think Proton will do the same thing.

11

On my laptop (Linux mint - which may make this whole comment irrelevant) I needed to use proton bridge to get protonmail working with Thunderbird. Not sure if that’s a Linux thing, or a proton/Thunderbird thing.

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12

Thanks for the input.

13

If you are using Proton you should be using Proton Pass/Simple Login for aliases and not using your actual Proton email(s)…

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14

Yes thats essential - Proton mail is encrypted so third party mail apps won’t work without Proton Bridge to decrypt the mail box. This is all well documented on Proton site including what email apps bridge supports.

Like Tuta, Proton has a very good mail app that you can get through Aurora store:

1 Like
15

I bet that’s the issue.

Thanks.

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