I have been looking for an email client on Linux after being tired of Gmail and Outlook web clients.

I had Thunderbird installed on my system and thought I’d give it a spin. I set up POP for my email accounts and it worked fantastic… For a total of 2 hours, after which I realised that searching in Thunderbird is simply not going to work for me. I need to search by attachment name and sometimes even by text inside attachment and unfortunately Thunderbird can’t do that (I think I tried an extension too but it made the UI super clunky to the point that I couldn’t even understand how to navigate it anymore).

Does Betterbird or any other email client fix this problem? I’m willing to try other options if they are FOSS.

Thanks

  • @[email protected]English
    16•4 days ago

    I’ve always liked Thunderbird. Geary is also nice. Not sure if it can attachment search.

    You can filter messages with attachment on Thunderbird btw

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      4•4 days ago

      Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment. Unfortunately that’s a deal breaker for me. I need it to search the Content-Type field at the very least and I don’t think it can do that without an extension

      • 𝚝𝚛𝚔English
        7•4 days ago

        Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment.

        I just searched for text thats in an attachment filename and it worked - with a caveat. I have a filename called “PMASUP236 - Operate Vehicles In The Field.pdf” on an email. There is no reference to the PMASUP236 in any other part of any email.

        If I search “PMASUP236”, it returns the email as a result.
        If I search “SUP236” it does not.
        If I search “Operate Vehicles” it returns that email (along with a heap of others containing the word “Operate” and “Vehicles” in any order).

        Admittedly this is on Windows at work, though I do run Thunderbird on Linux at home. Will have to try it there to confirm.

          • @[email protected]
            2•4 days ago

            If you’re on Debian Stable you might have a version of Thunderbird that doesn’t have this feature, since software there is a bit “outdated”. Next stable (trixie) releases in few months though.

          • 𝚝𝚛𝚔English
            1•3 days ago

            I just checked on Linux (Thunderbird 128.5.2esr, Opensuse Tumbleweed) and the behaviour is the same.

            If I search “PMASUP236”, it returns the email as a result.
            If I search “SUP236” it does not.

            This is using the normal search function (top of screen in current version). Quick Filter does not look at attachments at all by the looks. The “Attachments” toggle is only a has / does not have attachment filter.

            • @[email protected]OPEnglish
              1•2 days ago

              I see. Is there a way I can use regular expressions to search? I.e. “*SUP236*”?