run thunderbird in background or as icon in systray?
 

Hey folks, I have an issue which may be a simple case of RTFM, but bear with me.

I am running -current using xfce as my DE. I have set up and am using Thunderbird as my mail client, but it bothers me that I must have a full instance open and running on the desktop (or reduced to the taskbar) to receive mail. Is there a way to reduce thunderbird to a system tray icon instance or run in the background some other way so that I am still notified of new messages without having a full instance cluttering up my desktop?

There seems to be no option for this in the Thunderbird menus...am I missing something?

Thanks,

Ahz

I usually have Thunderbird running on a different desktop than my working one: the New Mail Attention extension will flash the taskbar icon and make it appear on all desktops (at least in KDE - XFCE is probably similar).

I usually do that as well, but I'd like it completely minimized and out of the way, similar to the way ktorrent and amarok minimize to the tray. Apparently there is an extension for thunderbird that is supposed to add this functionality, but it seems to be a bit buggy, and designed mainly for w7.

There were some mentions of listing thunderbird among the startup apps; I tried this, and my xfce panel failed to run. I'll keep looking...

I used to use kdocker when I used Thunderbird+KDE 3.5. It looks like it has been rewritten to support QT4 so it may do the job (though I haven't tried it since the rewrite). There may be other applications that do this as well; I haven't had a need for it for quite a while.

Do you also have KDE installed?
If so you can set up Thunderbird in the Xfce "launcher" as so,

ksystraycmd thunderbird

or

ksystraycmd /usr/bin/thunderbird

whatever works for you, and from then on a Thunderbird icon will appear in the system tray.

Sounds good. Where do I put that command? Should I create an entry in the Xfce startup applications list?

**update**

made an entry for thunderbird icon in Xfce -> Settings -> Session and Startup -> autostarted applications and used ksystraycmd thunderbird as the command.

Upon restarting Xfce not only did I have an icon in the tray, thunderbird started up full screen #BAM#... when I clicked on the x to close the window, the icon disappeared as well. Restarting Tbird did not bring the icon back. Hmmm.

AND...solved? Instead of launching thunderbird at startup (which I wasn't keen on doing anyway) I placed a launcher in the XFCE panel and set it to execute the ksystraycmd thunderbird command. Works works works works! I can then right click in the icon that appears in the tray to hide Tbird, the icon remains, but my desktop is clean!

Thanks cwizardone!

Ahz

You are welcome!
:)

Hate to jump in late, but... if you have Thunderbird (or pretty much anything else) running and minimized when you shut down KDE or Xfce (and the session is "saved"), it'll start automagically when either window manager starts (at least it does when I exit then startx). No foolin' around that way (and, if you don't want it restart, just exit Thunderbird before you exit the window manager).