Thunderbird Community Forum

It's pretty much in the title. My in box freezes up and no emails arrive. Microsoft will drop drop down a box asking me if I want to open THUNDERBIRD and says make sure I'm using a trusted server - app??? I don't understand any of this!

I want to be able to switch a large chunk of my email archive "off" so it doesn't automatically load when Thunderbird launches (and consequently is invisible to search), but then bring it back online whenever I need to search deeply.

My Local Folders weigh in at 15 Gb. When Thunderbird launches, which currently takes a few minutes, Task Manager shows it takes up 1.8 Gb of memory, which I assume includes Thunderbird code plus an index it builds of all the messages in my folders. Not only does Thunderbird slow to a crawl and sometimes freeze up and crash, but this memory load appears to be slowing down my computer as a whole.

I can remove archives from the picture manually now: I can close Thunderbird, use File Manager to move the folders I want to be invisible to a location outside of Thunderbird's ken, and relaunch Thunderbird. And then reverse the process the next time I need to perform a deeper archive search. The fly in the ointment is that moving all those tens of thousands of EML files takes time and increases the possibility of file damage each time. It seems like moving the river to fill a bucket.

Another less than ideal solution now is to maintain two copies of Thunderbird, one for current and recent mail and another dedicated to archive folders. We'd have to perform a search in both Thunderbirds to be sure we'd found all instances of something.

I'd like to be able to simply toggle a local folder's visibility within the Thunderbird user interface.

Ideally, Thunderbird would be able to remove a folder from memory when I toggled it to invisible, increasing response time on the fly. But even if I had to reboot Thunderbird to get new visibility settings to affect its RAM footprint, being able to easily toggle folder visibility would still be a huge boon.

In the user interface, I imagine Toggle Folder Visibility added to the Tools menu. This function would display a checkbox next to each local folder showing its visibility status: checked for visible (the default), unchecked for hidden. It would be necessary to click Save for Thunderbird to act on changed visibility requests. Subsequently, hidden folders would be shown dimmed in the folder tree and their contents invisible. Searches would skip over them automatically.

Your thoughts?

Juniper

Hello! The other day everything worked as usual, and I shut down the computer for the night. The next morning, Thunderbird immediately crashed/shut down when starting each of the 2 profiles I always use. The 3rd profile, which is the default-release running a different email, still seems to work normally. Thunderbird 115.10.1

I have tried Windows (10) safe mode, as well as thunderbird Troubleshoot mode and working offline, but the issue continued to occur.

I'm at a loss now as to what could cause 2 profiles to suddenly cause it to crash. By the way, one profile is for a gmail account and the other one is for an Outlook account, so they don't seem to be related.

In case it helps, there were 2 Microsoft Visual C++ programs installed or updated, and updates to Microsoft 365 and Google Drive just before the problem started. These were all auto updates in the background.

Any help from the Community would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Thunderbird (current version) freezes each time an email is closed and when it does so, it freezes the entire computer. Computer: MacBook Pro 16"; Tahoe 26.2. The freeze last for 2-5 seconds before it releases.

When inserting several larger images (JPEG, 1.4 MB, 1770x2440 px, 300 dpi) directly into the message body (i.e. not as an attachment), Thunderbird crashed and the draft of the written message was not saved.

Is there a limit to the maximum size or format of an image that can be inserted directly into the body of the message?

I am using THB release 140.6.0esr/32-bit

After successfully downloading Thunderbird several times (my browser is Firefox), the only functioning option provided is to make a donation. That is, it's telling me I must make at least a $5 donation in order to proceed to setting up a Thunderbird account. This despite clear statements on the website that donations are not required in order to use Thunderbird. There is no way to skip this step.

After closing the donate window, I'm taken to a nearly-blank screen with absolutely no functioning features on it other than a link that leads to multiple, useless articles about who knows what.

Please fix the site and advise how to proceed without further roadblocks.

Today - 26/01/2026 - Thunderbird keeps crashing for no reason. I receive a dialogue box to either quit or start Thunderbird again and to add to a crash report. I have been doing this all morning - no response. I have gone onto Mozilla Google search to see if there is a problem - nothing. I have shut down and re-started the computer - nothing happens. Please can you respond and maybe give me a customer service 'live' person who can talk me through this. I have used Thunderbird for over 15 years, but this is defeating me. I am in my late 70's and cannot cope with the way your Community site works. Thank you for your help. Hope to hear from you soonest.

When I am working from home, on my home network, and using a VPN, (Windows 11) whenever I receive new messages, the app becomes completely frozen. That is, if the app is in the background and I receive an email "bing bong" notification, I can go to the app, but I can not click on anything. Nothing responds. I cannot change tabs, select a message, move the window, or even use the close box to quit the application. I must force quit via the Windows tray icon. If I open the application and it immediately checks for messages and gets new messages, also I can not interact with any on-screen window or element. I must force quit. Then, after force quitting, I reopen again, and get no new messages, the previously new messages I can click on and read. So at no time can I get messages, and continue using the app. I also had a draft email in progress, and received new messages, and then the draft message was non interactive. When I tried to quit the app, I saw a popup message about saving the draft, but also could not click on it. This problem does not happen at work on my internal network and no VPN. Our email is all POP based (yes you read that right, all POP no IMAP), FWIW.

when i went to add a new email account to TB. it just freezes. (same window after 2hrs) I have restarted the app, rebooted the PC, even tried a manual update of TB. same result (see attached). any help would be greatly appreciated.

THUNDERBIRD ver: 147 OS: WINDOWS 10x64

thank you

Since about five days, Thunderbird keeps crashing without any notice. Once started again, it crashes after a few minutes -and so on...! What can be done? Thnaks for your help, Manfred

Hi Support, The last Thunderbird Version crash on Mac OS Sequoia 15.7.3 Mac Apple M2 Pro, 16 Gocot RAM The crash occurs after login to install a utility. => Therefore, I cant't use Thunderbird (I am a small Thunderbird doner). NB: I cant't find the command for starting Thunderbird in maintenance mode. Thanks for help

For several weeks (I have a work-around for accessing emails) I'm unable to open Thunderbird. First instance of this was Sunday evening Dec 28. I've attached a screenshot of what I see.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird (twice) with obviously no joy.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Please fully explain any file or procedural references; in other words, please do not assume I lmow what you're talking about.

Thanks in advance.

Since i updated to 144 Thunderbird works well once started for a few minutes and then starts eating memory and in a few minutes it uses all system memory (64GB) and when virtual memory is exhausted it crashes

Now using 145 beta with same problem.

Using google calendar and only one plugin (Clippings for Thunderbird), tried to disable plugins, calendar, hardware acceleration, tried to compact folders, clear cache, clear msf with no success

Once I try to add a new email account and have entered the necessary data, I get the ad that the account will be created. However, the program simply hangs up and remains in that display.