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Linux with TB 60 and newer - how to add google to search list!

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  • Last reply by James

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This is the solution to get Google Search working in TB 60 and newer - I followed the exact instruction here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-search-engine-open-search#thunderbird:linux:tb60

But Google never showed up in the search list and the search.json.mozlz4 just gets regenerated when TB starts.


So for linux users, shut down Thunderbird and go to your home folder and find .thunderbird. Open it and open the profile folder - it may be named something like /home/xx/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/ Where the xx is your username and xxxxxxxx.default is the profile folder.

Now delete search.json.mozlz4

Then rightclick on http://bwinton.latte.ca/Work/google.xml. Save link as a file called google.xml

Then open Thunar or your favorite filemanager in sudo mode and copy the google.xml to

/usr/lib/thunderbird/distribution/searchplugins/common/


Start Thunderbird and Google should now be in the list of search engines. It work on my system which run TB 60.2.1 on Peach OSI TW 16.04 LTS (which is a modified version of Xubuntu - alot more stable).


A pitty that mozilla can't figure out to update their own solutions, when they make major changes to their products!


Hope this help someone else, and you then help other people!

JBJ also known as insomniacno1

This is the solution to get Google Search working in TB 60 and newer - I followed the exact instruction here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-search-engine-open-search#thunderbird:linux:tb60 But Google never showed up in the search list and the search.json.mozlz4 just gets regenerated when TB starts. So for linux users, shut down Thunderbird and go to your home folder and find .thunderbird. Open it and open the profile folder - it may be named something like /home/xx/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/ Where the xx is your username and xxxxxxxx.default is the profile folder. Now delete search.json.mozlz4 Then rightclick on http://bwinton.latte.ca/Work/google.xml. Save link as a file called google.xml Then open Thunar or your favorite filemanager in sudo mode and copy the google.xml to /usr/lib/thunderbird/distribution/searchplugins/common/ Start Thunderbird and Google should now be in the list of search engines. It work on my system which run TB 60.2.1 on Peach OSI TW 16.04 LTS (which is a modified version of Xubuntu - alot more stable). A pitty that mozilla can't figure out to update their own solutions, when they make major changes to their products! Hope this help someone else, and you then help other people! JBJ also known as insomniacno1

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The safe place to get Search engines like Google is at https://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html and not some random site.