Unable to use Thunderbird - keeps crashing since connecting to Proton Mail Bridge
I've been having a bit of a nightmare - I was using Google mail - then I migrated to Proton - now I am going back to Google (for now).
I added my email address to Thunderbird and then had to installed Proton Mail Bridge to allow me to download all those emails to Thunderbird. This is apparently 9.5GB worth of email according to Mail Bridge.
Now when I open Thunderbird it keeps crashing, becoming unresponsive. I don't know how to proceed - do I need to sign out of Proton Mail Bridge - or Delete my account in Mail Bridge - or something else.
I can't tell if Thunderbird is busy "compacting folders" or some other task...
I have been in the meantime trying to delete messages from my Proton mail (in my browser) to see if that helps. But I can't tell if this is doing anything beneficial or not.
I literally can't open Thunderbird now without it crashing, despite me not taking any kind of action (just the spinning/loading wheel constantly visible).
Hope this is enough info but happy to share anything else! I have tried restarting the computer too.
All Replies (2)
I know very little about the Proton Bridge, but I see from their setup web page (<https://proton.me/support/protonmail-bridge-clients-windows-thunderbird>) that it inserts itself in the the operating system as a proxy server, after which you set Thunderbird up to direct its mail traffic through the Bridge rather than an external mail server. It also looks to me like Proton is, or acts like an IMAP server, which means there are copies of all messages on the server, so removing the account from Thunderbird poses no risk of data loss.
A few things I'd try... Here are some suggestions from a thread here a couple of years ago ( <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1526364> ) at least one of which seems to have solved another user's similar complaint:
- Restart everything: It sounds basic, but try fully quitting Proton Bridge and Thunderbird, then restart your computer. Sometimes the bridge just gets stuck in a weird state.
- Check your login/session: Open Proton Bridge and make sure you're still logged into your Proton account. Sometimes after updates or reboots, the session expires and you have to log back in.
- Run Proton Bridge as Administrator: Right-click the Proton Bridge shortcut and choose “Run as administrator.” On Windows 11, this sometimes helps with network permissions.
- Check for app updates: Make sure you’re on the latest version of both Proton Bridge and Thunderbird. Proton especially pushes out bug fixes fairly regularly.
If this doesn't do the trick, try uninstalling Proton Bridge, rebooting the computer, then re-installing Proton Bridge.
Let us know how that all works out and we may have some other suggestions if necessary.
Thanks Lin - I had read elsewhere that I should adjust 2 settings; going to the account settings and ensuring that the sync email option was set to a smaller period of time (I adjusted to a few days). Because I think it was "stuck" trying to sync a huge inbox... it look me a long time to adjust this setting as it kept crashing before I was able to get to this screen.
It is usable now and I am manually deleting a lot of messages to help save space. But another query I hope you can help with - right now my inbox is connected to Proton. But I will soon be leaving Proton and (for now) using Google / Gmail settings - I have this all ready to go. First I wanted to ensure I had a copy of emails on Thunderbird, from the past year or so (I was using Proton for 1 year) and then I will reconnect it to Google/Gmail, and then *hopefully* the emails will merge.
Do you know if this will work? So the plan is to point my domain email server settings to Google, and then I will manually update the mail settings within Thunderbird. Do you know if this is the best approach here?
If relevant I have a "hello (at) domain.com" email address.
The problem I had was that previously when I made this update back to Google/Gmail, I had lost emails from the past year, because I didn't realise Proton encrypts them in such a way... hence me having to install/setup Proton Mail Bridge.
Thanks for the help, I realise this isn't all on Thunderbird... perhaps a weird setup on my part.
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