Mozilla has ramped up development on the Thunderbird email client over the past two years. The Thunderbird 102 update arrived last year with many improvements, and now the next major release is available for beta testing.
Mozilla just released Thunderbird 115 beta 1, which is the first testing release for this year’s significant Thunderbird update. The development team has already discussed how version 115 is another phase in rebuilding Thunderbird “from the ground up,” with significant code rewrites and some functional changes. Mozilla did promise that the email app will still be customizable to some extent, so if you don’t like all the changes, some of them can be easily reverted.
The first beta release doesn’t have all of the promised changes, but there is a lot to talk about. User-defined OpenPGP passphrases are now supported, the Folder Pane and context menus have been updated, and many icons have been replaced. There’s also a laundry list of bug fixes and minor interface changes.
If you want to give it a shot, you can download Thunderbird 115 beta from the official site. However, installing the beta version will replace any current installation of Thunderbird, and Mozilla recommends backing up your data profile beforehand. The beta version requires Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.12 or later, or a Linux distribution with GTK+ 3.14 or higher.
Source: Thunderbird
