1855962 - "new mail" notification often shows subject of the wrong email

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Ralf Jung]

Steps to reproduce:

Thunderbird often (but not always) shows the wrong subject in the "new mail" notification.

I'm not sure how to reproduce this, but what happens is that I have unread emails in some folders, and then a new unread email arrives in an IMAP folder. A notification is shown, but the notification shows the subject of some previously received email, instead of the new one. This is "sticky", i.e. when it chooses to display subject X, then it will use that same subject X for all new incoming emails for a while -- though eventually it'll move on. I have no idea how to start or trigger or stop this behavior, but it happens regularly (almost daily, I would say).

This is on Linux, using Gnome as my DE.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Folder properties | Repair folder might help with that.

Comment 2

[Ralf Jung]

Repair which folder? The one where the new mails come in, or the one that contains the email that is always picked instead?

I do still have to repair folders every now and then because Thunderbird somehow corrupts its view of the folder (it shows the subject of one email mixed with the body of another, or so). But that's fairly rare; this issue with showing the wrong subject happens all the time, so I don't think this is folder corruption -- but I have no idea.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Primarily the incoming folder (though repairing both shouldn't hurt).
I guess it may not be that likely to fix the issue then.

Comment 4

[Ralf Jung]

Repairing folders definitely makes no difference.

Comment 5

[Bill R.]

Can confirm this issue exists since forever, it just became annoying enough now to report. Thanks Ralf for reporting this already.
To fully reproduce make sure your mail account uses Sieve rules on the server to move new messages into sub (Inbox.folder) and/or sub sub folders (Inbox.folder.sub)

The notification popup says something like 'Received 4 new messages' and then lists the subject of one of your unread / blue messages and not the subject of the actually new message that was just retrieved thru IMAP. Also note that the count of 4 is apparently wrong too, I have much more then 4 new (i.e. unread / blue) messages in my inbox.

To split this issue:

1. Subject used in notification
   I've tried to debug the behavior a bit and try to get a 'correct' notification. It seems that you have to open all folders that contain new messages for TB to show a notification for the actually just received email. This makes me think that TB shows the subject in the notification of the oldest email in any folder that hasn't been opened yet since receiving a new email in it?
   -> A mitigation for this could probably be to show the subject of the newest received email

2. New email count in notification
   I feel the count is still wrong, too low. Maybe it shows the number of folders that have not yet been opened since receiving new emails instead of the number of emails?

Using Thunderbird v128.4.0esr, repairing the Inbox folder in Thunderbird doesn't help.

Comment 6

[Bill R.]

To clarify, 'you have to open all folders that contain new messages' means that you really only have to open the folder. You can leave the messages unread. I guess that opening the folder also removes the blue / highlighted color of that folder and just leaves it bold.