The Tech Sensei: 4 Essential Thunderbird Extensions

Mozilla Thunderbird The Desktop Email client from the makers of Firefox comes with the same USP of Firefox, that's Customization.

You can customize the look and feel of thunderbird by adding themes and Icon packs and many extra features through extensions.

Let's look at some of those essential Thunderbird Extensions:

1. Minimize to Tray & Minimize to tray enhancer

2. Contacts Sidebar

3. Zindus

4.Lightning

Minimize to Tray:

This thunderbird extension does what it says, it minimizes thunderbird to the System tray freeing that precious Taskbar real estate every application in your machine fights for.

You need to use the key combo of Ctrl+Shift+M to use it or click on File -> Minimize to tray Or Get the minimize to tray enhancer add-on which adds a blue Icon to minimize to the tray and other useful configurable options like Always minimize to tray instead of to the taskbar, which can be accessed by going to Tools-> Add-ons->Options

Contacts Sidebar:

The Contacts Sidebar add-on moves the contacts to the sidebar providing easy access to the contacts.

You can compose an email by a simple double click on the name in the sidebar.

It also add’s some Pretty Useful search options to search with, by a word it contains or Begin’s with making it easy to locate that elusive email address you use regularly but can’t seem to remember.

Zindus :

Zindus is a add-on that let’s you Import and synchronize your Gmail contacts with your Thunderbird contacts list.

It has a few glitches under certain conditions when syncing with Gmail contacts but works well most of the time , if you come across any issues then checkout this FAQ for Thunderbird contact sync page at Zindus, it has very well written explanations with examples.

Lightning :

Lightning converts Thunderbird into a full fledged organizer by adding a Calendar application which makes it easy to organize and schedule your daily tasks.