Thunderbird for Android / K-9 Mail: April 2024 Progress Report

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

However, we’ve also heard numerous times that people love K-9 Mail and wished the app would stay around. That’s why we’ve announced in December to do just that. We’ve started work on this and are now able to build two apps from the same source code. Thunderbird for Android already includes the fancy new Thunderbird logo and a first version of a blue theme.

Does this seem daft to anyone else?

I assume the same codebase will generate the app branded as either k9-mail or thunderbird? What is the point of that?

[–] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the major hurdle is that they can't just rebrand the existing app, they have to release a new one. Keeping the K-9 app around will help the user transition long term. The folks in this thread follow Thunderbird and Thunderbird for Android development but my guess is the majority of K-9 users don't. At some point when or if K-9 installs drop they will probably revisit the issue.

[–] jwt@programming.dev 11 points 1 year ago

I think this is the way to go if it doesn't frustrate further development too much. Kinda risky to pull the old app out of stores and see the blissfully unaware part of your userbase leave for a competitor.

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm actually in both camps as I used K9 before even starting to use Thunderbird, and I was already a user of both when they announced this whole thing which made me super excited mainly because of Thunderbird's automatically detecting incoming and outgoing servers.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i urge everyone, if they can, to do a monthly donation to them

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And if you can't do monthly, at least donate. These guys do good work for users.

[–] 65gmexl3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought thunderbird is getting paid by mozilla

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

My understanding is that Mozilla does contribute, but I couldn't say how much or anything.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does anyone know where you can get the Thunderbird branded package?

[–] Zier@fedia.io 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The TB branded version is in beta and they are not releasing it until the branding is further along. Allegedly if you are using K9, there will be a migration tool to move to the TB branded app when released.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No I think you will need to reinstall. But as you can export your settings this is not a very big deal.

https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/releases/latest

Interesting, they renamed their org from thundernest to thunderbird. Makes more sense tbh.

I changes the URL to this in Obtainium and removed the old one. It seems they are still not changing the App ID as updates worked normally, but that version should get the redesign soon.

[–] loo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

If I understood the article correctly, the Thunderbird app is not released, yet. They said they are working on getting it released.

[+] penquin@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] njordomir@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I'm several years into my de-googling process and a solid email client is not something I'm worried about. K9 is great and, as Thunderbird, we can only hope that it gets better.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How did you go about de-googling your phone? I've de-googled my services but I'm just getting started on the phone.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Look into installing a custom ROM, some phones are not supported but many are by at least one custom ROM. I personally installed GrapheneOS and recommend that or calyxOS (never used it but hear good things) but those are only available for pixels, iirc LineageOS has the widest support but also isn't quite as secure. F-droid and Aurora store for apps.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Material you is coming from what I understood reading the linked blog post. There's also a screenshot. Or is Material 3 different from You?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cool!

For the branding couldn't they just do k-9 by Thunderbird or something similar?

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is also about the App ID, actually mainly. So they keep K9 so that users can get a popup "export your settings, uninstall and install TB Android". As Android only allows updates with the same app ID and developer key.

[–] yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They can probably even ease that out if they implement some API in K9 to let another app request data from it - Android has a system for letting apps send data to each other securely

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IPC? I mean it can export and import settings, sending that data via the share portal and opening it for import (autodetecting the extension) is really possible.

Not that I know how to write a single line of Android app code.

[–] yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

i was talking about intents! this is a specific API for one app to start & send specific data to another app on the system

[–] electricprism@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I'm ready for the rebranded APK now or any time

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