Thunderbird 115 introduced a new look. I hate it. Not only does it no longer fit in with KDE Plasma, it lost functionality due to it’s new integrated search bar in the title bar.
So I went on a mission to fix it.
To restore the regular title bar:
Go into Settings > General > Language & Appereance and uncheck the Hide system window titlebar
To remove search bar:
Toggle toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in Config Editor (bottom of Settings)
Find your profile directory via Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory (or about:profiles in same page)
This directory should have lots of files e.g. prefs.js and places.sqlite
Create directory chrome
Inside that folder, create a file named userChrome.css with the below content:
#unifiedToolbar {
display:none !important;
}
Restart Thunderbird
Enjoy!
Haha there is always someone who dislikes all the space in today’s modern design. I love the new look and it’s why I’m using Thunderbird now as a new user. But I love that we have choice in the Linux community to alter things.
Exactly. I liked the new design so much than old design , and as a fan of GNOME style , the Thunderbird-gnome-theme was perfect for me.
I was actually searching for a theme like this just a few minutes ago but didn’t find anything, so thanks for sharing. Does this use the GTK 4/Libadwaita style?
I wouldn’t really describe this as choice. This is an unsupported hack that can go away at any release.
And yes, there are those who dislike huge margins and rounded corners, and they are not even few.
the reason why people dislike huge margins and rounded corners is because they grew up in the oldschool era of computing (say from late 90s to maybe early-late 2000s). UI back then was designed to be relatively compact and be readable, everything useful is at a glance and it’s primarily designed for a keyboard and mouse, so if ther’s any margins it’s bound to be at least a couple to few pixels at most.
this kinda clashes with the more modern age where designs are a bit more simplified and spaced out (i guess inspiration came from mobile phone design, idk), and text is mostly discarded for more visual design, which if you know what the icons look like it can be a bit more simplistic, but when in 115 there’s a small little cloud with an arrow as the get messages button, yeah it’s a bit abstract (and now a bit harder to get to that button), meanwhile the new message button is more or less in the spotlight. it’s inconsistent imo.
i think it would have been more successful if they stuck to the pre-115 design but just touched it up a bit, maybe get some more modern icons for it and make it feel a it more sleek but without changing the overall layout and design.
and rounded corners are a taste thing, some people might like very slightly rounded corners while very rounded corners just aren’t their thing. (i’m one of those people, i just like corners that are like 1-3px rounded, 10 to 20 and above is a bit excessive and i generally associate overly rounded corners with the likes of google and microsoft with their current products).
and this is coming from a gen X lol, i just grew up XP what can i say. although i do like flat design when it’s done well (discord gets it right, excluding some rebranding choices).
I’m 23 and I cannot bear huge margins and rounded corners. They are ugly as hell, and the margins even take away a lot of usable space. I don’t want to use a 7" phone just because of this shit.
When I started using Android (~7 years ago) the actual Material design was the thing. I liked it, and that is what I still like on mobile. Also it’s clearly better than what was before that.
There were rounded corners, but they had a tasteful radius (2-3 dp in Android units), which I even liked more (and still do) than zero. Anything called “Material” after that is a lie, though, those have nothing to do with it, and mAtErIaL yOu is definitely not me; I read changelogs when updating apps, when I see there it seriously turns me down, and in cases I haven’t updated ever since, because the app works totally fine in the last version that is not the ugliest thing I have seen.I did not use the internet much in the early 2000s, but if I could I would much rather choose that design, even on my 5" phone, than today’s rounded corners and huge margins.
It’s sad that you hate it. It’s good that you found a way to fight against change.
I will however admit that I didn’t consider Thunderbird ac an alternative for my email management prior to v.115. Now I find it finally not ressembling a Windows 98 email client and really like it.
imo i liked the fact that it looked like Windows XP-era Outlook (not that i used it), i just liked the simplicity of it and the legibility. With 115 now it just seems poorly put together.
for instance, the buttons for messages have now moved to the pane where your accounts and folders are, Get messages is now just a little cloud icon in the left, and New message gets all the spotlight for some reason. it just looks like someone just slapped things together with no rhyme or reason, it’s inconsistent.
i liked the prior spaces update because you could just hide it into a little toolbar. Now they have a bar that when you get rid of it, it just messes with the position of the window buttons. not a good look imo.
it’s still a good client though.
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I haven’s seen the updated UI, but if Firefox taught me anything I have to thank you in advance
I was right, this is nasty
I absolutely hate it too, it’s unfortunate that users have to jump through hoops editing profiles and css files just to tweak things.
There is theme support for thunderbird so if someone makes a classic theme, you can just download and install it.
But depends on the level of changes you want to make… Maybe not all can be changed with themes?
If thunderbird’s theme support is like of firefox, then you can’t make a theme with these changes, because you can’t restyle the chrome, and you can’t affect any arbitrary about:config values.
the issue with hiding the system window toolbar is that it puts a border around the window buttons, which is inconsistent with other programs. kind of a shame they did this redesign, as get messages and new message are now lopsided and send gets more piority. it just looks like it was poorly put together in photoshop or something.
and i kinda see what they were going for this redesign but honestly it’s too much imo, it’s trying to make thunderbird something it’s not.
after all we chose thunderbird because of its oldschool look, now they’ve kinda ruined it. still going to be using it though.
Thanks, first thing I did as well.
Still the best email/calendar client though.
