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Thunderbird for Android / K-9 Mail: April 2024 Progress Report - The Thunderbird Blog (blog.thunderbird.net)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

However, we’ve also heard numerous times that people love K-9 Mail and wished the app would stay around. That’s why we’ve announced in December to do just that. We’ve started work on this and are now able to build two apps from the same source code. Thunderbird for Android already includes the fancy new Thunderbird logo and a first version of a blue theme.

Does this seem daft to anyone else?

I assume the same codebase will generate the app branded as either k9-mail or thunderbird? What is the point of that?

[-] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago

I think the major hurdle is that they can't just rebrand the existing app, they have to release a new one. Keeping the K-9 app around will help the user transition long term. The folks in this thread follow Thunderbird and Thunderbird for Android development but my guess is the majority of K-9 users don't. At some point when or if K-9 installs drop they will probably revisit the issue.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I think this is the way to go if it doesn't frustrate further development too much. Kinda risky to pull the old app out of stores and see the blissfully unaware part of your userbase leave for a competitor.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I'm actually in both camps as I used K9 before even starting to use Thunderbird, and I was already a user of both when they announced this whole thing which made me super excited mainly because of Thunderbird's automatically detecting incoming and outgoing servers.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

i urge everyone, if they can, to do a monthly donation to them

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

And if you can't do monthly, at least donate. These guys do good work for users.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I thought thunderbird is getting paid by mozilla

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

My understanding is that Mozilla does contribute, but I couldn't say how much or anything.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Been using k9 for over 4 months now. Pretty nice. A couple of not so big deal issues, but overall pretty nice. I wish it had material you design where it followed the system tint color. I wish it would stop complaining about authentication here and there. And last wish is to have the delete icon on the bottom instead of all the way at the top. Lol

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Yes, I'm several years into my de-googling process and a solid email client is not something I'm worried about. K9 is great and, as Thunderbird, we can only hope that it gets better.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

How did you go about de-googling your phone? I've de-googled my services but I'm just getting started on the phone.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Look into installing a custom ROM, some phones are not supported but many are by at least one custom ROM. I personally installed GrapheneOS and recommend that or calyxOS (never used it but hear good things) but those are only available for pixels, iirc LineageOS has the widest support but also isn't quite as secure. F-droid and Aurora store for apps.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

OnePlus phones are rootable if you buy them unlocked (not from a carrier), and you can install anything you want on them. Some of their older phones even support straight up Linux mobile.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Material you is coming from what I understood reading the linked blog post. There's also a screenshot. Or is Material 3 different from You?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

They're different in some way I guess. The material design is basically Google's HIG, the you is the tinting from the wallpaper colors. Just like how KDE does their tint the whole UI from the wallpaper.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Does anyone know where you can get the Thunderbird branded package?

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

The TB branded version is in beta and they are not releasing it until the branding is further along. Allegedly if you are using K9, there will be a migration tool to move to the TB branded app when released.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

No I think you will need to reinstall. But as you can export your settings this is not a very big deal.

https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/releases/latest

Interesting, they renamed their org from thundernest to thunderbird. Makes more sense tbh.

I changes the URL to this in Obtainium and removed the old one. It seems they are still not changing the App ID as updates worked normally, but that version should get the redesign soon.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

If I understood the article correctly, the Thunderbird app is not released, yet. They said they are working on getting it released.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Cool!

For the branding couldn't they just do k-9 by Thunderbird or something similar?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

This is also about the App ID, actually mainly. So they keep K9 so that users can get a popup "export your settings, uninstall and install TB Android". As Android only allows updates with the same app ID and developer key.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

They can probably even ease that out if they implement some API in K9 to let another app request data from it - Android has a system for letting apps send data to each other securely

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

IPC? I mean it can export and import settings, sending that data via the share portal and opening it for import (autodetecting the extension) is really possible.

Not that I know how to write a single line of Android app code.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

i was talking about intents! this is a specific API for one app to start & send specific data to another app on the system

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I'm ready for the rebranded APK now or any time

this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
224 points (97.9% liked)

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