Thunderbird New Mail Popups -- How to Kill Them?

I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been much, if anything, about this on LQ. (Didn't show up in my searches, at least.) I'm posting this question her because all of the "fixes" on all of the pages out on the Intertubes that I've visited that claim to fix this just flat out don't work.

Q: How does one stop the popups that Thunderbird tosses up on the desktop when new mail arrives? Actually, that's not my ultimate goal. I don't really mind seeing a popup when new mail arrives in my Inbox.

What T-bird is doing, though, and what I want to end, is its popping up a notice that I have new mail in my Junk folder. Or my Trash folder. Or any other folder that I've moved mail into. I've gone into the Options menu and unchecked anything that has to do with T-bird notifications. I've gone into the configuration editor and made sure that anything "mail.biff.alert.*" is set to "false" and it's not having any affect. (Yes... I've bounced T-bird after these changes.)

Any ideas how I can keep T-bird from popping up windows to remind me that I just dragged N messages to the Trash folder? :/

I receive a ton of email each day and whoever posts the cure to these dawggoned popups will receive my eternal gratitude and, perhaps, a virtual beer or two.

TIA...

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Rick

I don't use Thunderbird (I use Sylpheed or Claws), but I found this thread on the Mozilla support forums that may help: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1207751

Well I use Thunderbird on Firefox 28/KDE and actually DON'T get those popups you describe unless the message is left in my inbox.
I'm not sure what I'm doing that's different from what you're doing rnturn, but maybe this is it. Routinely, when I define a filter, I've ended most every filter with "Stop Filter Execution". That is, I do that after the message has been moved to a local folder in Thunderbird.

It's possible that I've never noticed the popups for junk and filtered messages, but maybe that has something to do with it.

Originally Posted by frankbell I found this thread on the Mozilla support forums that may help: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1207751

It doesn't really address the problem I'm having.

I would accept not receiving any notifications at all over the current situation where I get a popup whenever a piece of email appears in any of my mail folders... even after I was the one putting it there. "Inbox" is the only folder I would like to receive a notification about when something new appears.

Summary:

• Internet -> Inbox: notify me.
• Inbox -> sub-folder: do not notify me.

I can't imagine what the T-bird developers see as the purpose of notifying a user that they moved an email from 'Inbox' to, say, their 'Proposals' or 'Junk' folder. Heck, it pops up a notice when I throw away an email.

Since I've turned off everything I can find about notifications, I'm at a loss as to why I'm receiving any notices at all at this point.

--

Originally Posted by rnturn It doesn't really address the problem I'm having.... I'm at a loss as to why I'm receiving any notices at all at this point.

By default, Thunderbird will notify you of new mail via a pop-up box, as shown here.

Originally Posted by Habitual By default, Thunderbird will notify you of new mail via a pop-up box, as shown here.

Advice from a dozen versions/patches ago (at least). I've read a ton of these and none of them seem to do anything to solve or even change the behavior of the notices. "New mail" doesn't mean that spam I dragged from Inbox to Junk. Except in T-bird 52.8.0, I guess.

I did find some 'about:config' settings for an old plug-in/add-on that I no longer use and deleted from my setup long (several T-bird releases) ago. I disabled (set to 'false') all of those as well--in case T-bird was, somehow, acting on those even without the add-on--but after bouncing T-bird my dragging an LQ email about this subject into my 'Forum-related->LQ' folder resulted in yet another pop-up. Next I looked into actually deleting those config options. Well, T-bird won't let me delete them but resetting them to be empty strings didn't stop the popups, their appearance, position, etc.

It almost makes me want to leave T-bird. If it weren't for the muscle memory.

Tools menu --> Options
General Tab
When new messages arrive section
Uncheck "Show an alert"
Leave "Show a Tray Icon" and "Play a sound" checked...or not.

Not sure why you're getting alerts for anything but new messages...

I have that checked, tho, and don't get pop-up alerts...

Tools menu --> Options General Tab

Windows version? May not be applicable.

When new messages arrive section Uncheck "Show an alert" Leave "Show a Tray Icon" and "Play a sound" checked...or not.

I have all of those unchecked. I used to have 'play a sound' checked for a long time until it stopped working on T-bird and they suggested you install an add-on to make that work. (Seemed damned silly to do that and leave the checkbox and the dialog to select a sound file that won't be played in place in T-bird.)

Not sure why you're getting alerts for anything but new messages...

There's apparently a pretty generous definition of "new" that I'm unfamiliar with. I doubt I'm the only person whose idea of "new" means "new in my Inbox".

This is a persistent little problem. All the options that seem to be related to alerts are configured to turn them off but they continue. I guess I wait for the next update and cross my fingers.

Originally Posted by rnturn Windows version? May not be applicable.

Good point. I’ll check on my Linux desktop and advise.

At this point I might recommend doing an export backup, removing TB and reinstalling it. It sounds like the configs got messed up.

On Linux desktop the path to the settings is Edit menu --> Preferences. The General tab looks pretty much the same as on windows.

Again, tho,I have it checked, but don't get any popups at all. I'm doing an IMAP connection to my mail server.
Version is 52.6.0

Originally Posted by AwesomeMachine At this point I might recommend doing an export backup, removing TB and reinstalling it. It sounds like the configs got messed up.

and/or a new profile?

Maybe it's not Tbird, but an addon?

Maybe it's not Tbird, but an addon?

The only add-ons/plug-ins I have loaded are the Lightening calendar and "Send Later" (for delaying moving emails off to the SMTP server) add-ons. Neither of those seem to have anything features that would go snooping around in sub-folders and looking for "new" emails.

I did (last Friday) undergo a major corruption to my home directory (effin' Chrome) that forced me to create a new one and rebuild it from the corrupted home directory one config file at a time. Recovery was time consuming as I was making a snapshot of $HOME before each config subdirectory was added back in and I tested by making sure I could successfully log back into KDE. Thank $DIETY that the majority of my everyday information is in a separate filesystem mounted on $HOME/Data. (That mount point gets backup up daily; $HOME doesn't yet until I find all the places where useless browser and thumbnail caches live so I can ignore them.) For T-bird's email config I started over from scratch using the information pointing to my IMAP server. Fortunately, the calendaring information wasn't lost (lucky that). I haven't noticed any spurious pop-ups alerting me to the fact that I just dragged some emails to some random subfolder. Yet. I have seen a couple of those "a script is running slowly" messages show up when I notice that the system is slow and the CPU is pegged at 100%. Not sure just what can be done with those yet but at least the totally useless pop-ups haven't returned.

So... it could be that Awesome Machine's theory may have been spot on.

Crossing my fingers while I use T-bird for the next few days.