Thunderbird not showing in Applet

[Michael Merline]

Applet does not show emails from Thunderbird. Also, no option available to view what programs are being recognized by the applet or choose which ones to show notifications from. Even a list to know which programs are compatible would be useful.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Thanks for your feedback. We hope to integrate better with Thunderbird in the future. In the meantime you may want to try the extensions mentioned here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#thunderbird

[Ted Gould (ted)]

This isn't an indicator applet bug. It is a feature request for Thunderbird. Please file a bug in their bug tracker encouraging them to support the indicator-messages in Ubuntu, we'd love it if they did!

[Michael Keppler (bananeweizen)]

As long as the user cannot get any information about the supported programs from the panel applet, I consider this at least a usability bug of the panel applet. Without any settings (or explainations) you will always make the impression of being able to handle any installed messaging tool and the kitchen sink, leading to more bug reports of this kind.

[YannUbuntu (yannubuntu)]

A user found this workaround:

- create the file /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/skype (with admin rights)
- add the following line in it and save:
/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

What do you think about it? i suppose there is a reason why it is not by default ?

[Ruben Verhack (ruben-verhack)]

Thanks YannUbuntu for showing this.

This is still not the full integration I would like to see, but it is a nice start. It shows that Thunderbird belongs in that list, and uniforms the starting of the program.

[David Nottin (danot)]

Just to be complete on what YannUbuntu mentioned, I propose to create a file which could be called 'thunderbird'.
It avoids further confusion.

[YannUbuntu (yannubuntu)]

oops my mistake ;) so I correct my post #4: here is the workaround for Thunderbird:

- create the file /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/thunderbird (with admin rights)
- add the following line in it and save:
/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

[Ruben Verweij (ruben-verweij)]

I've added experimental support for the Indicator Applet to the Libnotify addon. See this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/libnotify-mozilla/+bug/429395.

[Claude LaFrenière (climenole)]

A "No Choice" for users is always a bug imho.

This apply for this indicator about the email client (here Thunderbird)
but also for the other options: Instant Messaging/VoIP (e.g. Skype) and µblogging...

Let users choose. :-)