Customize Your Thunderbird

#thunderbird

Thunderbird is my favourite email client in Linux. But on an 2013 MacBook Pro, using it became a pain.

Stop Crazy CPU Usage

Due to some internal problems, my thunderbird CPU usage went up to 40% during idle time. Found this solution and worked:

https://rainbow.chard.org/2013/02/19/thunderbird-high-cpu/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/49ur6w/finally_got_thunderbird_to_stop_freezing_and/

Open "Preferences" > "General" > "Config Editor...", set mail.db.idle_limit from 300000 to 300000000.

Open "Preferences" > "General", turn off indexing service.

Set the Default Sort Order

Open "Preferences" > "General" > "Config Editor..." again.

If you wanted to sort all mail by Thread, Descending (newest at top), the preferences in the config editor will look like this:

mailnews.default_sort_order:    default     integer      2
mailnews.default_sort_type:     default     integer     22

Change the Font Size

This works on Thunderbird 78.4.0.

First, go to "Help" > "Troubleshooting Information", click the button "Show in Finder" next to "Profile Folder". It will open the profiles folder.

Find the folder named xxxxxx.default-release, create a new folder chrome along side with the Mail folder.

Inside the chrome folder, create a file userChrome.css with following content:

/*
* Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning
*/
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

/* Set font size in folder pane */
#folderTree >treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text {
    font-size: 1.2rem !important; /* You can also use em, pt or other units here.*/
}

/* Set font size in thread pane */
#threadTree >treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text {
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
}

/* Set height for cells in folder pane */
#folderTree >treechildren::-moz-tree-row {
   height: 22px !important;
}
/* Set height for cells in thread pane */
#threadTree >treechildren::-moz-tree-row {
   height: 22px !important;
}