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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

What I want is a unified (?) comms client. Email, SMS, RSS, notifications, etc. in a single dashboard.

They all have the very similar properties. Sender / source, subject, body, attachments, etc.

And I want to make it easy to tag / organize them. Maybe a tab for each type + tags within each. Search across all (since too often I forget the medium of a particular msg)

Finally, I don't want the provider of this service / client reading the content and generally probing the sphincter of my privacy.

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Thunderbird once had a chat extension that worked great. It supported the big protocols - including Yahoo, AOL, XXMP, MS Messenger, and IRC I believe and a whole slew of lesser known protocols. I had to stop using it when the world embraced Skype and everyone moved there, probably around 2006 or so I think.

Today, most chat protocols have the same flaw as Skype: hostility towards third party clients.

Thunderbird still has chat-support out of the box. I use it for XMPP and IRC. And it also still supports Newsfeeds, but I would say it could be improved on that part.

I've been using matterbridge[1] to bring all sorts of 'modern' non-standard-compliant chat services back to my irc client[2]

[1] https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge

[2] https://xkcd.com/1782/

I pretty much have this setup currently:

Email hosted by a 3rd party (like migadu or purelymail) then moved my cell number over to voip.ms, which sends all texts and voicemails to me via email, where I can now respond to texts via my email client. Then I use feedmail to have all my rss and social feeds email the full text and images to me in either a digest or when they are published.

I have to say I've been loving it. I'm currently setting up notmuch and alot as my mail indexer/sorter and commandline viewer, too.

Sounds like the next major version of Thunderbird might suit you.

What's in that version?

Check out the roadmap.

Here are the features mentioned in the GP post:

  * Unified client for Email, SMS, RSS, notifications
  * Easy to tag / organize mail.
  * Service provider cannot read content

Here is the roadmap:

  * https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap

Here are the features mentioned in the roadmap:

  * Firefox Sync (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022)
  * Unified Toolbar (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022)
  * App Menu (Expected Delivery: Q3 2022)
  * Mail Tab Redesign (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022 / Q1 2023)
  * Link Preview Card Improvements (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022)
  * Account Setup Hub (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022)
  * Customizable Shortcuts (Expected Delivery: Q4 2022)
  * Calendar UI (Expected Delivery: Q1 2023)

Where is the overlap? Thanks.

Modernizing the existing feature set, bringing in Firefox Sync to allow syncing settings, tags et al. Even got an Android client for Thunderbird coming down the pipe.

Lack of syncing read/unread state is what stops me from using Thunderbird for RSS currently, but this would change it to my go-to app for most things.

None of that addresses GP posts' specific concerns.

Yes it does. Unified comms via Matrix, which bridges SMS, Facebook Messenger and much more into a single pane. RSS? Yup. Notifications via Matrix, SMS and RSS? Yup. Exactly what he's asking for, and they're modernizing it and adding sync too.

XMPP support

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