Thunderbird Android client is K-9 Mail reborn, and it's in solid beta | Hacker News Reader

Thunderbird Android client is K-9 Mail reborn, and it's in solid beta

arstechnica.com

72 pointstodsacerdoti25 comments

K-9 is great. I think I first used it ~14 years ago, happily for years, then couldn't use it due to various phone changes, then, after I moved from iPhone to GrapheneOS a few years ago, I was happy to find that K-9 was available.

My first concern about Mozilla taking over K-9 is that it not get privacy-violating phoning-home, nor dark patterns pushing that, like Firefox has.

For example, there's zero technical need for an email program to phone home to Mozilla when you configure it for a new email server.

Nor is there a technical need for a Mozilla "sync service" for K-9 settings, nor for dark patterns pushing users to use it.

Depends what it's sending. I don't blame Mozilla for wanting to know the distribution of number of email servers (this influences UX decisions) nor for defaulting sync to something that Just Works (that's the reason everyone uses Apple and Google products after all, they Just Work).

My concern is they'll just make it worse. My other concern is they felt the need to use the same Thunderbird brand on several independent products.

That is unfair and a mischaracterization of Mozilla.

1. Most people are not using a fully encrypted self-hosted email server. "Phoning home" is meaningless if everything is already hosted in the cloud, more like the cloud phoning the cloud. But point taken, it is one MORE person with access to your data.

2. Again, sync services are helpful for most people and can easily be disabled for power users.

3. Mozilla is doing as much for free software as anyone and should be supported in this expansion.

When you add an account in Thunberbird desktop, it sends your domain to Mozilla. This is namely done for autoconfiguration (populate server names and ports).

The problem with this is that it's just a dumb database (it doesn't check SRV and TXT entries) and as such, the database should really be client-side. The entire thing is just a pretext so that they can collect of all mail domains used by users.

This isn't very Privacy-friendly.

> That is unfair and a mischaracterization of Mozilla.

No, it's exactly how mozilla operates. They are nothing more than controlled opposition almost fully funded by google to the tune of nearly $1bbn and an adtech corp in their own right.

> 1. Most people are not using a fully encrypted self-hosted email server. "Phoning home" is meaningless if everything is already hosted in the cloud, more like the cloud phoning the cloud.

Some of us are.

> But point taken, it is one MORE person with access to your data.

Not just one more, one more giant database (and therefore giant target). My server provider isn't trawling through my server looking for datasets to sell. It's not worth their time for a couple of cents/dollars. But when you can mass-collect data from every user of software, prepackaged in a nice homogeneous gift wrap it is both easier to collect and worth more.

> 2. Again, sync services are helpful for most people and can easily be disabled for power users.

Email can be autoconfigured with nothing more than a username and password. Mozilla could trivially store k9-specific settings directly on the email server. Cheaper (more efficient use of funds), easier to maintain, No privacy leaks and no dependence on mozilla. But there lies the rub.

> 3. Mozilla is doing as much for free software as anyone and should be supported in this expansion.

No, they should stop doing everything that's not firefox and even that should be met with fierce pushback since they don't seem to care about a free and open internet until they are made to.

What do you mean exactly with Firefox phoning home? Telemetry? Usage statistics?

Thunderbird hasnt been part of Mozilla for a while. It’s its own organisation. So i would assume this will be the case for the android client too.

Just installed it and imported my K-9 mail settings. (I had to export a file from K-9, the "From App" option didn't work.) I like the design language much more; it doesn't feel outdated like K-9. The K-9 settings are mostly still there, but some things have definitely been changed. Gone are 1st/2nd class folders, replaced by individual toggles for display, push, sync, and notifications for each folder. I'm guessing the old way might've been confusing for the masses, but it makes it a huge pain to do bulk changes. Otherwise it seems to be pretty much the same functionality wise and I'm cautiously optimistic.

> what I love about K-9 whenever I've used it: configurability

I'm using K-9 but I cannot say configurability is the app's strongest point. For example, when getting a notification about a new email, I always wished I could just Archive directly (the current buttons are "Mark as read" and "Delete", I think). It's impossible to configure that, and the issue has been around for.... 6 years[0].

The FairEmail app always felt way more configurable, but it isn't shining when it comes to design, at least the last time I checked.

[0] https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/issues/34...

It looks like they gave K-9 a nice facelift. There aren't any screenshots in the post but there are some in the Play store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.thunderbir...

I totally missed that K-9 Mail would become Thunderbird¹. Given that both Thunderbird on the desktop and K-9 Mail on the smartphone serve the same group and seem to share a similar philosophy, this makes sense. I already use both in any case.

1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/email-client-k-9-mai...

I guess it still needs some work according to the reviews... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.thunderbir...

An average of 4.3 isn't too bad? It seems like Google is choosing the worst reviews as "most relevant" (whatever that means?) and is putting them at the top.

I've been hearing disturbing rumours about ads/trackers, can anyone comment to that?

There is a setting for sharing usage data but it was disabled by default.

Seems they initial had telemetry activated by default, but deactivated it for the moment.

[..]Temporarily removed telemetry while we improve user choice[..] from https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/releases/...

Seems this is the issue where it's debated: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/issues/81...

Also debated here of course since that's what I noticed it first: https://sigmoid.social/@davidculley/113245153254319956

Here's hoping we eventually get IMAP labels and virtual folders :fingers-crossed:

thing located in place it was before https://f-droid.org/pt/packages/com.fsck.k9/

As the article says:

> Meanwhile, K-9 Mail has suggested that K-9 Mail should continue to be available with its own name, icon, and color scheme, but the same code base, after Thunderbird becomes official.

I would love to see it released with a fingerprint lock feature (Android).

I honestly can't tell which version of K-9 I am running (because Android) but I can say that it has followed me through at least three phones and I have no plans to upgrade to anything newer. It does what I need it to do and all of the changes since then have just been UI busywork or removal of features that I actually use.

You can generally see the version for any Android app by swiping up to reveal the app switcher, then click the app icon, "info", and scroll down to see the version.

> I honestly can't tell which version of K-9 I am running (because Android)

I don't know what Android has to do with it, but starting from the main screen: Click the left hamburger menu to open the panel, scroll to the bottom, click settings, click about.

S/MIME?

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