[[!meta title="Emailing and reading news with Thunderbird"]]

For more documentation, visit the official [*Thunderbird* Support](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird) website.

<div class="bug">

<p>The <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/instant-messaging-and-chat">chat
features of <i>Thunderbird</i></a> don't work in Tails.</p>

</div>

[[!toc startlevel=2]]

A new version of *Thunderbird* is released in Debian shortly after each Tails release, because both *Tails* and *Thunderbird* follow the [[release calendar of *Firefox*|https://whattrainisitnow.com/calendar/]]. As a consequence, until Tails 7.5 (February 2026), the version of *Thunderbird* in Tails was almost always outdated, with known security vulnerabilities.

By installing *Thunderbird* as additional software, the latest version of *Thunderbird* is installed automatically from your Persistent Storage each time you start Tails.

Choose **Apps&nbsp;▸ Tails&nbsp;▸ Persistent Storage** to open the Persistent Storage settings.

Restart Tails.

<div class="tip">

<p class="command">sudo journalctl -f -u tails-additional-software-upgrade.service</p>

When opening *Thunderbird* for the first time, an assistant appears to help you configure and access your email account.

Enter your name, email address, and password into the corresponding fields.

The assistant tries to configure automatically the correct settings to connect to your email provider based on your email address.

If the automatic configuration fails, consult your email provider
about how to configure your email account manually.

To know more, see also this [comparison between POP and
IMAP](https://help.riseup.net/en/email/clients/#choose-imap-or-pop) by
Riseup.

<div class="tip" id="gmail">

<h2>Gmail</h2>

<p>You can use your Gmail account with <i>Thunderbird</i> in Tails.</p>