Betterbird. Simply better.
Betterbird is a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird, Thunderbird on steroids, if you will.
Betterbird is better than Thunderbird in three ways: It contains new features exclusive to Betterbird, it contains bug fixes exclusive to Betterbird and it contains fixes that Thunderbird may ship at a later stage. Please refer to this feature table for examples. This should give you an impression of where the project is headed. More information on why we're doing the project can be found at the FAQ.
Betterbird 91.0 released on 5th August 2021
Today we are shipping the first release "bb8" of Betterbird version 91. In a successful beta period of Betterbird, we shipped the first beta release "bb1" on 12th July 2021, the last beta release "bb7" on 2nd August 2021. Please refer to the release notes for details.
Betterbird 91.9.0 released on 30th April 2022
Today we are shipping Betterbird version 91.9.0-bb31. Please refer to the release notes for details. German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese localisations available, other languages on request. A portable version for Windows is also available. There's also a Mac build in English only.
Other news
Interesting reading: Will Thunderbird finally catch up with quality and usability issues? Will they? Our project leader wrote an answer.
Want to see Betterbird running on a mobile ARM64 device (Samsung Galaxy Tab S7), click here. Note: That's the work of a volunteer, not strictly related to the Betterbird project.
For the much requested multi-line view, see here for details.
Ukrainian colours
Due to the current situation, we are featuring the Betterbird logo at this website in Ukrainian colours as of early March 2022. This will be reverted in due course. The red-orange colour scheme in the product hasn't changed as those colours are part of the registered trademark. Red-orange together with a Phoenix-like bird on one hand signify a more aggressive policy and on the other hand a resurrection from the ashes unleashing the potential of the product while not being bogged down by annoying bugs.
We've had many requests to change the icons to make them better distinguishable from Firefox to avoid mis-clicks. This is under consideration, however, it entails replacing the artwork in 20+ source files and the question is whether this effort is warranted and wouldn't be better used elsewhere.
Betterbird elsewhere on the web
| Our GitHub repository | github.com/Betterbird/ |
| Discussion about all things Betterbird (in German) | Forum @ www.thunderbird-mail.de |
| Interview with the project leader (in German) | linuxnews.de |
| Arch Linux packages (English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese) |
aur.archlinux.org |
| Softpedia | www.softpedia.com/.../Betterbird.shtml |
| YouTube Video (in Spanish and a little outdated) | www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BCR8PUmst4 |
| Search on Google, more stuff apearing all the time: | www.google.com/search?q=betterbird |
| Reddit article showing up in the Google search: Handle with care, some posters there can't read or click a link | |