1702918 - make Thunderbird email notification not in the Windows Taskbar

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[David]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.114 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Hi
I use Thunderbird Windows 10 and it will be helpful that the email notification is not always present on the taskbar. Is it possible?

Actual results:

I have around 50 emails notification on daily basis with Thunderbird for Windows and the notifications are annoying and blocking my vision to work with.

Expected results:

it will be helpful if there is an alternate option to place thunderbird email notification besides the taskbar and I think a notification pattern like Thunderbird for Ubuntu which is on the middle of the screen is a good candidate.

Comment 1

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Appears to be more of an enhancement request to me.

The native Linux notification does appear at the top of the desktop window in the Notification area using the Gnome desktop, which Windows doesn't have.

I would suggest using the Windows notification which I think only changes the icon when there are new notifications.

Nope, there is a pop out.

Comment 2

[Ping Chen [:rnons] (away)]

Is system notification what you're looking for? You can set mail.biff.use_system_alert to true in the config editor. Search for config editor on the Options page.

Comment 3

[David]

Attachment: Screenshot_2021-04-05_20-21-04.png

hi
I try this mail.biff.use_system_alert. But, it shows nothing. As you can see, this is about thunderbird for Windows. What do you think?

Comment 4

[Ping Chen [:rnons] (away)]

Sorry, I didn't notice you are using 78. Do you want to try a beta or nightly version?

Comment 5

[David]

Sorry, because beta/nightly version are well-known for instability and I want to know about the risk. So, about this config mail.biff.use_system_alert to true what is that for?

Comment 6

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

(In reply to David from comment #5)

Sorry, because beta/nightly version are well-known for instability and I want to know about the risk. So, about this config mail.biff.use_system_alert to true what is that for?

On Linux operating systems it makes Thunderbird use the native Linux notifications.

I set it to false, so I see the notifications that you don't want to get.

How long do you have the notifications display for in Options > General > Incoming Mails? Click the Customize button and that will show you. One second is as low as it goes.

Comment 7

[David]

I set it to one second and it sometimes annoys me. if I have more than 10 emails. So, I use Ubuntu and that config editor setting is exist on Thunderbird 78. So, I just wondering why this option does not exist on the Windows counterpart?

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

For me, with windows 10 and 90 beta, I don't see this problem.

I think on Windows (and in general) the direction is to use native notification methods. Does that sound correct Thomas?

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Note for version 78 we did Bug 1664586 - TB 78 tray notification issues (tray notification stay around after close, if multiple thunderbird versions running at the same time)

And more generally, https://mzl.la/3dE0Oau is a list of bugs with activity in the past 8 years

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 2: Setting to `Use the system notification`

Here's a screenshot of the Thunderbird settings checkbox to Use the system notification and the resulting effect, which is the native Windows notification popup, which then slides out to the right after some seconds.

The checkbox toggles the mail.biff.use_system_alert pref, which is correctly seen also in Advanced Preferences.

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #8)

For me, with windows 10 and 90 beta, I don't see this problem.

Me neither - works for me on Win10, 102.4.2 (64-bit).

I think on Windows (and in general) the direction is to use native notification methods. Does that sound correct Thomas?

Well, we still offer a choice between Thunderbird's own notification and using the native system notification, which works correctly as seen in screenshot 2 of my comment 10. Then, for the native Windows system notification, there are detailed Windows settings to control that for each emitting application (e.g. to switch off the Windows-native popup for Thunderbird, so that it just silently goes into the system notification area), and I've seen Daily amongst those on my system (not 102 though):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-notification-and-quick-settings-in-windows-ddcbbcd4-0a02-f6e4-fe14-6766d850f294
On Windows, you can use this direct link: ms-settings:notifications

With that, I don't see anything left to do here. It's not really feasible to mimic Linux widgets which Windows doesn't have.

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 3: Windows system settings to control notification behaviour of Daily

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #11)

Then, for the native Windows system notification, there are detailed Windows settings to control that for each emitting application (e.g. to switch off the Windows-native popup for Thunderbird, so that it just silently goes into the system notification area), and I've seen Daily amongst those on my system (not 102 though)

Here's a screenshot how to fine-tune the native Windows notification settings for Daily, including how to switch off the popup banner.