Thunderbird 145.0 has officially landed, and it comes with native support for Microsoft Exchange. This is a massive update for anyone who uses Thunderbird daily but has struggled to connect to their work email without resorting to clunky third-party add-ons or bridges.
I would say one of the biggest problems for Thunderbird has always been the lack of seamless Exchange integration, but this update changes that. This new support lets users take advantage of active mail synchronization, notifications, basic search capabilities, and real handling for folders and flags. You also get full attachment support right out of the box.
It is important to remember that while the email portion is fully functional in version 145, the integration is currently limited to email only. If you are hoping to see your Exchange calendar and address book pop up, you will need to wait just a little longer. However, the Thunderbird team is already planning to roll out support for those missing pieces early next year. This initial release is still a huge step forward.
The best part about this is that the Thunderbird team is not stopping with EWS. The developers are already working on integrating support for Microsoft Graph, which is the newer API recommended by Microsoft. The EWS protocol is considered legacy technology, so moving to Graph is the right long-term move.
This update is coming with newly enabled support for DNS over HTTPS. This is an important security feature that helps protect your privacy by encrypting your DNS queries, making it much harder for third parties to snoop on the websites and services you are connecting to.
The new Account Hub has also got many tweaks that make setting up new accounts much less painful. For those who need granular control over their connection, the team added a manual configuration option for general email accounts. The devs also added a manual configuration setting for EWS account creation. If your Exchange setup is non-standard, this lets you input the necessary server details directly without relying on auto-discovery.
The developers tackled a ton of bugs and apparently made changes based on how people use the software. The team officially retired Skype integration from the Address Book IM selection because Skype itself has been retired. Some terminology was also standardized, like replacing the string "Junk" with the more commonly accepted "Spam." This is a minor change, but it makes the interface feel much more consistent and modern.
One of the most annoying bugs for users was that message headers were re-downloaded every single time Thunderbird started up. That is now fixed, which should make launch times snappier and reduce unnecessary network traffic. Also, the 'Save All' attachments feature will stop overwriting existing files with the same name without giving you a warning first.
Screen reader users will also get some benefits from fixes that make sure the close button and error notifications are narrated. Also, users can now disable the spinning overlay in the Account Hub, which is great for accessibility and system performance.
If you are using Thunderbird on Linux, you should know that the team has stopped shipping 32-bit Linux x86 binaries. Moving forward, the focus is exclusively on 64-bit systems, which are pretty much the standard for modern operating systems.
If you are looking to try out these changes, you will need to be running Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.15 or later, or a Linux distribution with GTK+ 3.14 or higher. You can grab the updated version directly fromthe official website.
Source:Thunderbird
