Thunderbird API – How to Access Only Recent IMAP Messages Locally?
Hello, We’re developing a headless, accessible interface to Thunderbird for blind users, and we’re integrating with the browser.messages.list() and browser.messages.quer… (மேலும் படிக்க)
Hello,
We’re developing a headless, accessible interface to Thunderbird for blind users, and we’re integrating with the browser.messages.list() and browser.messages.query() APIs to access email content.
We’ve encountered an issue: the Thunderbird web extension API requires messages to be downloaded and stored locally to access their full content via the getFull() endpoint, but there appears to be no way to programmatically trigger a message download from IMAP using a message ID or header.
To minimize disk usage, we only want to store the most recent 30 days of messages locally. However, when we enable “Synchronize the most recent 1 month” in Account Settings → Synchronization & Storage, Thunderbird begins syncing from the oldest messages in the account (starting in 2008), rather than downloading the most recent month (e.g., June 15 – July 15, 2025).
My questions: Is there any way to configure Thunderbird to download and store only the latest (by date) 30 days of IMAP messages?
Alternatively, is there a way to use the WebExtension API to access the full content of recent IMAP messages without syncing the entire history?
I'm currently using Thunderbird 128.11.0esr on Linux (MATE desktop).
Any advice or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you.