HI Terry.

I'd like to make sure that I understand.

1. You receive a new message.
2. "1" appears on the taskbar and tray icon.
3. As Thunderbird receives more new messages when you are not using Thunderbird, that "1" is incremented, apparently with an accurate count of new messages.

But then, what do you mean by "when I actually download the new emails"? Do you have Thunderbird set to download only headers? Then, when you must select the messages to see the bodies?

And what do you mean by "still only 1"? You said that the counter was incremented. Do you mean to say that after you select the messages to download the bodies, the counter reverts to "1"?

If I understand correctly, then almost all that makes sense. When you select the messages to download the bodies, they are no longer new. They may remain unread for some time, depending on how long you have set Thunderbird to wait before considering a message read.

I understand that the taskbar and tray icon can show the count of either new messages or unread messages. See my screen image. I can imagine that you have them set to show new messages and that the counter is behaving as it should. The only mystery would be why "1" still appears in the badge. Is there still a new message somewhere?

But I may not be understanding your situation perfectly.

The “1” may be a separate issue:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1549896

Rick

my thunderbird is always set for me to download messages manually not to do it at startup nor automatically everytime it goes off and checks for new messages, which i think is set for something 10 or 15 minutes

i don't just fetch headers

to clarify the point i was trying to make :

    *     i get notified both in task bar & the system tray (my choice is for thunderbird to tell me how many new messages as in the pic you kindly attached)
    *     when i am notified of a new message the counters for both initially start @ 1, correctly
    *     i may continue doing other work
    *     during the time, b4 i choose manually to get thunderbird to download new message, thunderbird intermittently still polls or rather checks for new messages
    *     in that time i have NOT actually been sent any further new messages but rather thunderbird's counter still just increments each time it checks (more like a count of the number of time it has checked, rather than the real number of messages)
   *     when i decide to go & download messages thunderbird system and taskbar may still tell me there's more, for arguement's sake 6 unread messages (incorrectly after say an hour) but it still actually only has 1 to download
    *     after the download the counter then resets to zero & the process begins again next time i'm actually sent a new message

i hope that better explains what i've always experienced

thanks Terry