We’ve known this for some time. The email client Thunderbird per Android it will be based on the well-known K-9 Mail app, which has historically shared the same objectives as Mozilla’s email client. In June 2022, we announced the union of forces and intentions between Mozilla Thunderbird and K-9 Mail, also highlighting the current shortcomings of client email “alternative” for the little green robot.
Among the software for managing the email on Android one of the most used is Gmail, together with Outlook. Both, in fact, not only support Google and Microsoft accounts (both personal and corporate) but offer the possibility to set up and use email addresses of third parties.
Unlike Gmail, Outlook and other proprietary email clients, K-9 Mail is free and open source software, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. To confirm the “bond” established with Mozilla, the K-9 Mail project has already been renamed to Thunderbird Android su GitHub.
K-9 Mail embraces setting up Thunderbird accounts on Android
Mozilla developers are evolving K-9 Mail for Android with the Thunderbird “philosophy”. Starting with the most recent version of K-9 Mail (release 6.800), the account setup process Mail becomes much simpler, just like it is on Thunderbird for desktop systems.
K-9 Mail’s email account setup mechanism was quite antiquated and only facilitated automatic setup in the case of main providers of email. Android app users were therefore often forced to manually set the account parameters: This means that they had to look for server details and other information in order to start sending and receiving messages with K-9 Mail on the Android terminal.
Now, however, Mozilla announces that it has completely rewritten the configuration module of accounts. K-9 Mail uses the mechanism of automatic configuration Thunderbird features and supports a range of email providers: simply type in your email credentials, choose a name for your profile and define the account synchronization interval.
With a previous update, K-9 Mail has already obtained OAuth support: this means that the email client allows the setting of Gmail, Outlook and other providers addresses without even entering username e password. Just simply get one authorization token via Web and that’s it.
There remain some problems still unresolved
Aside from the excellent addition of the wizard and automated for the configuration of new email accounts, Mozilla admits that some problems still remain in the new release of K-9 Mail.
First, K-9 Mail does not have permission”alarms and reminders” are Android 14: Users must then manually grant this permission if they want it push notifications by the application.
Some virtual keyboards also enable autocorrect when you type an email in the K-9 Mail account setup screen. Also, copying and pasting a password in the K-9 Mail screen, you may not get the desired effect, due to the retention of some formatting (usually correctly ignored when copying information of this type).
The latest version of K-9 Mail is already available on the Google Play Store, on F-Droid as well as on GitHub, also in APK format.