1765105 - Can no longer mailto using thunderbird

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Daniel Essin]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:99.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/99.0

Steps to reproduce:

I used the menu option to email link.
In the past I was able to set thunderbird as my default mail app
Windows 11 does not allow this.

Actual results:

Instead of opening thunderbird it opens the Microsoft mail app

Expected results:

It should have opened thunderbird.
If the changes in windows 11 are a problem then Firefox should provide an independent mechanism for specifying the default mailer that does not rely on Microsoft. It kind of violates the whole point of "open source software" if you tie it so tightly to proprietary apps that it prevents users from doing what they want/need to do.

I'm going to classify this a a defect report since it used to work and no longer does. If it's not a defect (cough) then it is an urgent feature request but, from the users perspective, it sure feels like a defect

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for reporting this. I think it's a leap to assume changes in Windows NN won't cause problems in a product that implements a windows features, whether or not proprietary methods or open methods are used. (assuming changes in Windows is even the cause) Similar problems happen with Mac versions.
.
caspy7, can you reproduce this issue?

Comment 2

[Caspy7]

These steps to reproduce were not explicit. Did you mean the email link under the File menu? That's what I tested.
I went to a page and selected the File menu then "Email Link..."

From there a "Choose Application" window opened, I clicked "Choose..." and selected the thunderbird application (in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird for me) and it worked as expected opening a compose window.

However it looks like I've uninstalled the Mail app on Windows 11. 😬 So in that sense my install doesn't reflect the average user.

It's possible that Microsoft is doing something nefarious here, but can't say. Does Firefox on first startup look for available email applications and if it finds only one, select that by default? Is Microsoft altering Firefox to set Mail?

I believe the fix here, on an individual basis, is to open Firefox Settings, find the Applications section and change the action for the mailto type.

Comment 3

[Daniel Essin]

Yes, after I uninstalled Mail, things started behaving more as expected. That's why I suggest adding a setting to Firefox to explicitly dedine what mail app to launch. It's less than open-source if it depends on Microsoft to be well-behaved and not force people into their ecosystem.

Comment 4

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

Can you select Thunderbird from Settings > General > Applications > mailto > Use other > Browse?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

(In reply to Daniel Essin from comment #3)

YI suggest adding a setting to Firefox to explicitly [decide] what mail app to launch.

This setting already exists:

(In reply to Masatoshi Kimura [:emk] from comment #4)

Can you select Thunderbird from Settings > General > Applications > mailto > Use other > Browse?

So we do support what you want, which is setting a handler app that is different from the system/OS preferred option -- though you should also be able to set Thunderbird as the default mail client in Windows 11. Either way, it isn't clear there's anything to fix here. If setting Thunderbird as a custom app doesn't work, we'd need more details about what "doesn't work" means and then we can reopen the bug and investigate further.