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Thunderbird is very slow if it has not been used for a long time.

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 11 views
  • Last reply by david

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I use Thunderbird on several computers and my IMAP account contains several hundred thousand emails.

In everyday use on my main computer this works very well and I have no problems with the speed of Thunderbird. If I open Thunderbird on a computer that I only use every 2-3 weeks, it becomes a real test of patience.

Thunderbird updates, indexes and compresses about 50 folders in the background.

As a result, Thunderbird is hardly usable for about 30 minutes. For example, if you want to write a new email (the most common case), the mail editor is extremely slow to use - characters entered only appear with a delay of 10-30 seconds, even though the computer is already very powerful with an SSD and a fast CPU.

Is there a configuration option to run the mailbox update with such a low priority or to assign a high priority to the Mail Editor?

I use Thunderbird on several computers and my IMAP account contains several hundred thousand emails. In everyday use on my main computer this works very well and I have no problems with the speed of Thunderbird. If I open Thunderbird on a computer that I only use every 2-3 weeks, it becomes a real test of patience. Thunderbird updates, indexes and compresses about 50 folders in the background. As a result, Thunderbird is hardly usable for about 30 minutes. For example, if you want to write a new email (the most common case), the mail editor is extremely slow to use - characters entered only appear with a delay of 10-30 seconds, even though the computer is already very powerful with an SSD and a fast CPU. Is there a configuration option to run the mailbox update with such a low priority or to assign a high priority to the Mail Editor?

All Replies (3)

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my IMAP account contains several hundred thousand emails.

Are you saying you've accumulated 'several hundred thousand emails' in Inbox?

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Yes :-) I subscribed to 2 dozens of mailing-lists over the last years :-) From my point of view a 30 minute blocked Thunderbird UI due to background indexing processes is not a good idea from a usability perspective. But its okay that the completion of indexing takes its time.

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Two possibilities: turn off global indexing in settings>general and adjust sync in account settings>synchronization&storage.

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