How can I minimize Thunderbird 60.2.1 to tray after "MinimizeToTray revived" add-on stopped working?

After update, my Thunderbird stopped getting minimized with the "MinimizeToTray revived" add-on.
Is there any way to minimize my Thunderbird? Any other add-on that works with the new version?

6 Answers

Birdtray is a system tray new mail notification for Thunderbird 60+. Birdtray checks the unread email status directly by reading the Thunderbird email search database, which makes it immune to Thunderbird API changes. As a result, Birdtray is a great Firetray alternative that shouldn't break on Thunderbird updates.

You can find the Birdtray source and instructions for compiling from source on GitHub. There is also a PPA you can use to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, 18.10 or 19.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/apps
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install birdtray

From / more info: Linux Uprising.

There is another add-on called "MinimizeToTray Reanimated" which claims to work with Thunderbird v60+.

MinimizeToTray Reanimated is an application mainly dedicated to Thunderbird to allow its minimization in the systray in one click. It is the update of MinimizeToTray Revived, which is not maintained anymore since the recent versions of Thunderbird.

Note: This add-on has not been reviewed by Mozilla yet.

Another alternative is FireTray. This is a fork from the original project that has been discontinued. The forked project supports Thunderbird 60+ and has other features such as supporting chat with a separate indicator icon etc.

Steps:

git clone
cd FireTray/src
make build

Then load the firetray-x.y.z.xpi addon through Add-ons/Extensions -> Settings -> Install Add-on From File.

Tested on Ubuntu 16.04 and Thunderbird 60.2.1

Use Kdocker or Alltray to start Thunderbird in startup programs. I use Linux Mint.

kdocker -d 15 thunderbird

The -d just tells Kdocker to wait at least 15 seconds before it gives up on finding the Thunderbird window. Default is 5 seconds which is too quick for Thunderbird on my machine.

On kubuntu 20.04 and the snap version of Thunderbird 68 (slow startup!), I used Kdocker combined with "Minimize on close" extension (which prevents Thunderbird to actually close, so it continues receiving emails when I'm not actively using it). It required a little bit of tweaking but now it works flawlessy. I start kdocker and thunderbird at startup with the following command (thanks @pomsky for suggesting the delay option).

kdocker -d 40 thunderbird &

40 seconds of delay are required to make sure the snap version of thunderbird actually have sufficient time to open up. I tried with 15, 25 and 30 seconds but it wasn't enough. I suggest to increase the delay if your machine require it.

Systray-X is another systray for Thunderbird. It supports close / minimize to tray, autostart, showing the number of unread emails in the tray icon, etc.

For how to install it, see the repositories section from its Github.

Source.