Thunderbird Anpassungen
Back when I was still using Windows, I used EmClient as my email client. I had purchased a lifetime license for it quite some time ago during a special promotion. Unfortunately, EmClient doesn't really work on Linux (with Wine).
The email clients available for Linux often lack features that are important to me, such as local archiving of emails.
Visually, I really like the email client built into the Vivaldi browser—but unfortunately, it doesn’t support saving emails locally in a folder structure.
Thunderbird
That's why, on Linux, the path always leads back to Thunderbird—or at least takes you past it.
Thunderbird supports all the features I want in an email client. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get used to its rather outdated look. With the “Card View,” the developers have come a significant step closer to what I’d like to see in an appealing inbox layout. I still wasn’t—and am still not—entirely satisfied, but with a few tweaks, I’m slowly approaching 100% satisfaction.
Adjustments
You can customize Thunderbird's appearance to suit your needs using a CSS file.
To do this, you need to do two things:
- If it does not already exist, create a folder named "chrome" (without quotes and in lowercase) in the profile folder.
- A file named "userChrome.css" is created in this newly created folder (again, omit the quotation marks and pay attention to the spelling).
This CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) contains the instructions for changing the appearance.
My customizations
I made the following changes to this file:
- The map view has been reduced to 2 lines. By default, only the label icon appears on the third line. With this adjustment, it moves to the right side of the second line.
- A highlighted email turns a slightly darker shade of blue, and the text changes to white for better readability.
- The email subject line appears in bold when you hover over it with the mouse.
The Code
Below you'll find the CSS code to add to the userChrome.css file mentioned above. Alternatively, you can download the userChrome.css file as a ZIP file. You'll find the download link at the beginning of the article, below the image.
tr[data-properties~="untagged"][data-properties~="unread"] div.thread-card-subject-container {
color: #1373D9 !important;
}
tr[data-properties~="untagged"][data-properties~="unread"].selected div.thread-card-subject-container {
color: white !important;
}
/* indent card subject */
.thread-card-subject-container :is(.subject){
margin-left: 10px !important;
font-size: 12px !important;
}
/*Card view optimized */
.thread-card-subject-container {
color: var(--tag-color) !important;
}
[is="thread-card"] {
height: 50px !important;
}
.thread-card-row:first-child {
grid-area: sender;
}
.thread-card-column:nth-child(2) {
grid-template-columns: 1fr auto;
grid-template-areas:
"sender sender"
"subject icons";
}
/* card background color for selected messages */
tr[is="thread-card"].selected .card-container {
color: white !important;
background-color: #1373D9 !important;
}
#threadTree tr:hover,
#threadTree tr.selected:hover {
font-weight: bold !important;
}
When you use the code above, your inbox overview will look like this:
- The subject line of new emails is displayed in blue
- When emails are selected, the line is highlighted in blue and the text turns white
- When you hover over it, the email subject is highlighted in "bold"
Every time you modify or create a new file, you must restart Thunderbird for the changes to take effect.
You can find more articles on various Linux topics here.
Downloads in diesem Artikel:
Downloads in this article:
userChrome.zip (528 bytes) - 2 downloads
Ikem: on 17.04.2025
Für das exportieren von Mails nutze ich die Erweiterung "Export to ZIP" von "Joaquín Serna".
Ralf Kerkhoff: on 17.04.2025
Ich habe den Artikel entsprechend ergänzt.
Zum Exportieren nutze ich "ImportExportTools NG" - das reicht mir völlig aus, insbesonders weil sich damit automatisiert auch der ganze Profilordner sichern lässt.
Bei mir läuft thunderbird nicht mit "mbox" sondern mit "maildir" - da habe ich bei den lokalen Ordnern schon jede mail im eml Format vorliegen.