Check to ensure you're composing in HTML, and then highlight the desired text and click the color icon on the composition tool bar. That should do it.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1503351

or

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1392360#answer-1540034

I've read through the links above. They suggest "Settings/General/Lang. & Appearance, Colours" and override. I do not find anything for overriding colors (or colours) in any settings. I searched for color and override and didn't find this.

I know the color is getting set by looking at the html, but it doesn't show that color in the compose window. Also, when someone sends me email with color, it only shows as black. I know the color is there because when I view it on my phone I see it.

This used to work

I've tried: reinstalling thunderbird Running in troubleshooting mode A new profile Looking at the error console Upgrading MacOS to 15.5 (needed to do anyway) Making sure everywhere is set for HTML Waded through the config editor looking for color and override I have several email accounts setup and none of them work

If I can't fix this I will have to dump Thunderbird and use an email program that does display colors correctly.

There are two issues here. First, there has long been an issue with setting the text colour in the message editor on macs, which is discussed here.

The second one is relatively new, related to the override setting in the Colours dialog (here). For some reason, this dialog is absent from TB 139 (see), although text colours appear here in the message editor and received messages with TB 128/139 on W11.

Maybe one of the tiny minority of mac users can offer more advice.