Sorry to hear that you are having a bad experience. Let's fix that.

I believe that what you’re seeing is the “Start Page” that shows up in the message compose/reading area when no email is selected. There is a donte call to action there and Thunderbird displays it by default when you first open Thunderbird, or if you switch to a folder but haven’t clicked on a specific message yet, or if you deselect all messages in the list.

Good News: Thunderbird is all about user control. If you find it distracting, then you can turn it off or change the default destination url; here's how:

Steps: Go to Settings (or Preferences on macOS). Scroll to the General section. Under Start Page, uncheck “Show Start Page in the message area when Thunderbird launches”. -OR- Change the url to something else. In my screenshot, I've made it the Thunderbird Reddit page.

I went to settings and deleted the start page, so now its blank. none of my emails show in the inbox in any of my accounts. all all blank. thanks again. I've used thunderbird since you started but every update hurts. I lose my filing system, history and now the blank screen issue. Any way I can stop updates once I get this version working? Eronne

I went to settings and deleted the start page, so now its blank. none of my emails show in the inbox in any of my accounts. all all blank.

I had exactly the same situation just now. Clearing the start page meant that selecting any folder just showed a white screen.

However, I realised that I had been using Thunderbird on a large screen, then moved it to a smaller one. The dividing line between the email list and the displayed email was at the top of the screen (looks to be about 50 pixels minimum). Normally I have the Quick Filter permanently displayed, and this was hiding the two messages that are normally shown in the 50 pixels. If you look carefully you can see the divider just under the quick filter.

Hiding the Quick Filter showed two emails, and I dragged the separator down to show more emails in the list.

Note that if you have the Message List Header hidden, then the Quick Filter toolbar doesn't overlay the message list, but is inserted above it. That should always happen. (Toggle the Message List Header in View > Layout > Message List Header)