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Thunderbird 2 is the next generation release of the award-winning Thunderbird email client from Mozilla.

These Release Notes cover what’s new, download and installation instructions, known issues and end user support / feedback for the Thunderbird 2 release. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla.

Give us your feedback through this feedback form or join us in the Mozilla Thunderbird forums, hosted by MozillaZine.

What’s New in Thunderbird 2

• Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
• Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
• Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
• Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
• Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
• Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
• Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
• Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
• Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
• Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
• Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
• Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
• New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
• Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

The Rumbling Edge has a more detailed list of notable bug fixes.

System Requirements

Before installing, make sure your computer meets the system requirements.

Downloading Thunderbird 2

Mozilla provides Thunderbird 2 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages. You can get the latest version of Thunderbird 2 here.

For builds for other systems and languages not provided by Mozilla.org, see the Contributed Builds section at the end of this document.