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What's the best open-source email app?
(feddit.it)
Thunderbird for desktop. Thunderbird for mobile.
Huh. TIL Thunderbird is on Mac. It's not on iOS for whatever reason. I guess I heard it was coming to iOS at some point and figured it just wasn't on Apple in general?
Used it years ago, willing to give it another chance. Mail (by Apple) is fine on iOS, but on the Mac, it could be a lot better. I'm no fan of Outlook, but that's what we use at work, and it makes Apple Mail look so bad. (I'm not going to pay for Microsoft 365 or Office on my Mac. I do not see Outlook as an option for my home computers. I don't like Microsoft software enough to pay for it.)
The android version is just rebranded K-9 Mail, which was a fork of the built in Android mail client from Android 1.0. So there isn't a lot common in desktop and android Thunderbird, it's not a port.
Desktop Thunderbird uses Firefox ESR under the hood, I guess the Mac version is not ported to ios because Apple's limitation on browser engines.
Not just... K-9 and Thunderbird worked together, so that K-9 godt features from Thunderbird and the other way round. True cooperation there.
Yeah, I follow its development, I wanted to emphasize it's not desktop Thunderbird ported to Android, but coming from a different source.
They're working on a version for iOS: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-ios
I vaguely remember K-9 Mail.
So Thunderbird requires a browser engine? I didn't think an email program was dependent upon a browser. I would expect one that was to be inefficient. Like a lot of people I work with use Outlook inside of Microsoft Edge. And I just look at them like they're crazy. Our workstations are powerful enough that there's not much difference, but why would you do that to yourself? (No, I'm not going to ask them. I don't want to hear their reasons. And it's not really hurting anything.)
Emails are html, a lot of things under the hood are similar, they don't have to reinvent the wheel if they start from a browser. Mailspring (mentioned in the thread) and afaik the new outlook (not outlook classic) are electron apps, so they are just a chromium windows.
BetterBird for desktop. FairEmail for mobile.
fairemail +1
I use the same combo.
I find FairEmail + Fossify Calendar/Contacts + DAVx5 works great on my android.
Exactly the same here. Works great.
I have betterbird on my laptop and Thunderbird on my desktop. Honestly I don't really notice a difference at all.
I am going to have to re read what is different.
For those that are interested here's a featuretable comparison between Thunderbird and Betterbird
https://www.betterbird.eu/#featuretable
That is a long list of things I never noticed. Funny that. I use both often, they seem the same to me, must be features that just dont matter to me.
Same combo, but I'd really like to switch away from BB/TB.
Same. I haven't found a decent TB/BB replacement yet though. Sad.
Thunderbird... no real competition there. For both desktop and mobile.
I don't know about "best" but on Android I've been using the K-9 mail app for years without problems. Supports multiple email accounts as well as standard IMAP/SMTP email protocols which is all I really need. The project was merged with Thunderbird so now it's Thunderbird for Android.
Thunderbird/k9
For Android? K-Mail. I think they renamed it to Thunderbird now.
Evolution isn't perfect but it works reasonably well. Has email, tasks, calendar, contacts and notes built-in. What else do you really need?
k9 on Android and Aerc on desktop/laptop
I wish there was one. Thunderbird has given me nothing but issues. KMail is lacking basic features, as does evolution. I obviously haven't tried them all, but this already took long enough and I'm tired of it.
I ended up settling on Betterbird. It's... fine lol
I am using K-9 and loving its features and design. Very clean and minimal. You can feel like you are using the original Gmail app.
Mailspring was quite nice last I used it
Geary for Linux, Thunderbird for Android
msync + notmuch + aerc.
Þe cloud is for transport and replication. Keep your data local.
Definetly Tuta.
And what does best mean? I think mu4e is the best. You might hate it.
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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