About a month ago, Thunderbird 128: Nebula was released!

I know, I didn’t know about it either. I just finally got it automagically last week. Chances are, so did the rest of you – after the Tbird team fixed all the bugs.

In any case, Thunderbird 128 looks the same, but there are quite a few notable improvements.

The Under the Hood Stuff

This is actually the big stuff this time around. For example:

• It’s faster and more fluid (no, really!)
• Those handy Unified Folders (like your One Inbox to Rule Them All) are way zippier
• Folder select / multi-select operations are faster
• Tbird notifications – like for new e-mails – are now native OS notifications
• You can even customize the color of each of your e-mail accounts! Don’t need that one, but… nice!

The end result of all of the above is that Thunderbird now runs, well, super-smoothly.

It’s buttery smooth!

Miscellaneous Good Stuff

As for the rest, not much else has changed. But there are a couple of other improvements I’ve found so far.

The first is that the Get Messages button now allows right-clicking so you can (once again) get new messages from only 1 of your mail accounts in just 2 clicks:

Yes, I really do have FIFTEEN e-mail accounts. It’s crazy.

It was also crazy when Tbird 102 removed the ability to get new messages for a single account – without going into the old menu system using the Alt key and clicking too many times…

Not any more! That oldie-but-goodie feature is baa-aack!

And the second new goodie is that the general right-click context menu gives you more options that are packed in very nicely:

Okay, that’s handy!

So yeah, that’s it… BUT:

It might not seem like very much. But trust me on this one, this is a BIG upgrade.

Thunderbird 128 is obviously evolutionary, but it’s worth every single byte. Since I’ve installed it, every single operation is just FAST. The difference is definitely noticeable.

This bird is the one everyone hoped to get 2 years ago with the release of the rewritten v102. But hey, coding a giant piece of complex software isn’t easy. And Thunderbird is still free, so you won’t hear me complaining.

And there you have it: E-mail really is great again!