When starting *Thunderbird* for the first time, an assistant appears to guide you through the process of configuring *Thunderbird* to access your email account.
If the automatic configuration succeeds, you might have to specify which protocol to use to connect to your email provider, either **IMAP** or **POP**.
- With **IMAP**, *Thunderbird* constantly synchronizes with the server and displays the emails and folders that are currently stored on the server. IMAP is better suited if you access your emails from different operating systems.
- With **POP**, *Thunderbird* downloads the emails that are in the inbox on the server and possibly deletes them from the server. POP is better suited if you access your emails from Tails only and store them in the Persistent Storage.
<p>Since Tails 4.13 (November 2020), <em>Thunderbird</em> 78 replaces the <em>Enigmail</em> extension with built-in support for OpenPGP encryption. If you used <em>Enigmail</em> before Tails 4.13, follow our [[migration instructions|openpgp_migration]].</p>
If you already have an OpenPGP private key outside of *Thunderbird*, follow the instructions below to export it from *GnuPG* and import it into *Thunderbird*.