542725 - tray notification "account - has X new messages" message count X is wrong

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Shy]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.249.43 Safari/532.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100111 Lightning/1.0b2pre Thunderbird/3.0.1

when you get new messages it displays this tray icon with the text "account has y new messages" (i.e. "gmail has 1 new messages").

The number of messages is wrong.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get a few new messages to different accounts
2. Check this tray icon
3.
Actual Results:  
The tray icon shows 2 new messages (1 for each account)

Expected Results:  
The tray icon should show the correct number of messages for each account

Comment 1

[Shy]

Attachment: manifestation of the problem in th 3.0.1

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Created an attachment (id=423962) [details]
> manifestation of the problem in th 3.0.1

Do you run extensions ? Is it better when extensions are disabled ?

Comment 3

[Shy]

I run extensions. 
I reproduced it with all the extensions disabled, so it is not improved.

Comment 4

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

David this looks like a dup - but I can't find it.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Confirmed! Every now and then, my TB status bar (any version up to 17.0.3) shows "4294967295 messages downloaded". So far I have not been able to relate this to any extension. This is hard to tell however, as this only occurs once every 2 months. I will keep testing and keep you informed in this thread as new details show up.
Warm regards to the community. Jerome.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Note, the count in the tray alert is NEW(ly received) messages, not unread messages.  The count in the folder pane is unread messages, not a count of NEW messages. 

Does this reproduce with Thunderbird 24?  You can find it at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/all-beta.html


(In reply to [e-mail] from comment #5)
> Confirmed! Every now and then, my TB status bar (any version up to 17.0.3)
> shows "4294967295 messages downloaded".

jerome, TB status bar count being incorrect is a different issue.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

> rereading this, I think it is not a bug.
I did not intend to post this.

Comment 8

[helkav]

I have just noticed this, however the message count is WAY out for me : I just received a couple of new messages in succession, and each time the count was 80 , then 79 when it should have been 1

I've checked in both TB beta and release

I tried running in safe mode , but the tray doesn't seem to exist then - is it disabled in safe mode?

Comment 9

[u512951]

Got the same problem in TB 31.2.0. the message in the tray pop-up shows the total number of messages in the mailbox instead of the unread count. In my case, I had a total of 13 messages in a mailbox including 2 news messages that just arrived. The pop-up said "account - has 13 new messages".

Comment 10

[u512951]

FYI, I am using an IMAP mailbox.

Comment 11

[leonardo]

i confirm the bug on notifications on thunderbird 31.5 , osx yosemite. 

I have 4 mail accounts and use smart folder for inbox with thread style visualization.

Depending on the mailboxes the count of the new messages is differently wrong. On a gmail IMAP inbox, the notification tray displays the correct count of messages, but for the wrong thread of messages. On a different IMAP inbox, the count is the amount of mails in the mailbox.

Comment 13

[Kent James (:rkent)]

I assume that on Windows and Linux platforms, the desired fix is to have the new message count that corresponds to whatever folders would also show their message summaries in the tray (that is, new and not unread).

IIRC OSX users wanted and got unread instead there (though I don't know if that works or not). Is that still the case?

Comment 16

[doug2]

Attachment: screen shot of total unread

During April-May 2025, the account message counts and total message counts seemed to be valid (using Daily). Now running 140.0b2 and the total has gone haywire. Total of all accounts should be 3, but showing 24.

Comment 17

[doug2]

For the last few months (April-May, 2025) the total message count has generally been correct. Now with Beta 140.0b2 the total message count has gone haywire. 3 new messages total (4 accounts) shows a total of 24.
Just now, the total new message count showed 49 when there was 1 new message!

Comment 18

[doug2]

This is called "piling on" in American football: After I wrote comment 17, I read the email and the count went to zero (i.e., no count displayed) and I minimized the app. I restored the window and the count showed 20 (but no new mail). Now it shows 24 (still no new mail). I would guess the counter value or sum is being corrupted.

Comment 19

[doug2]

I know the tray icon seems like a small thing, but it normally signals new mail, except now it's almost always a number which means I open TB to check way more often.

Comment 20

[doug2]

Daily 141.0a1 caught this disease of the random number in the tray icon. I was trying to find a beta without it.

Comment 21

[doug2]

140.0b3 seemed to be fixed. 140.0esr is not displaying a count at all. testing continues.