HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
thunderbird
thunderbird-android
Kotlin2013–2025
thunderbird / thunderbird-android

thunderbird-android

Thunderbird for Android – Open Source Email App for Android (fka K-9 Mail)

Mobile & DesktopCommunication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
30Distinct people
33Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
14.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Thunderbird for Android – Open Source Email App for Android (fka K-9 Mail)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

> what I love about K-9 whenever I've used it: configurability I'm using K-9 but I cannot say configurability is the app's strongest point. For example, when getting a…

yoavm used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:56:55 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year33 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-12-23 15:37:12 UTC to 2025-01-23 12:47:58 UTC.

02468102013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

2 sources
secabeen·Dec 16, 2020
> b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source. K-9 mail should satisfy these requirements. It's been slow moving development wise the last two years, but it is not dead: https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://github.com/k9mail/k-9
In Firefox Was Always Enough
ocdtrekkie·Jul 17, 2020
I believe Gmail switched at that time to pushing you to use effectively a Gmail-proprietary method to authorize access to a Gmail account. Nobody else was doing it at the time, I think official OAuth scopes actually came later. And bear in mind, OAuth to authorize mail access is weird. Generally speaking, mail clients use IMAP or POP3 and SMTP. One of the more popular open source Android mail clients, K-9 mail, still doesn't support it: https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/655 But the biggest issue is that, like the "unknown sources" checkbox in Android, Google uses scare tactics to discourage non-Google-proprietary apps and protocols. Use Google apps on Google devices only, otherwise you'll have to authorize "less secure" things.
In New iOS privacy feature may end an era of personalized ads

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.