The Thunderbird for Android beta is out and we’re asking our community to help us test it. Beta testing helps us find critical bugs and rough edges that we can polish in the next few weeks. The more people who test the beta and ensure everything in the testing checklist works correctly, the better!
Help Us Test!
Anyone can be a beta tester! Whether you’re an experienced beta tester or you’ve never tested a beta image before, we want to make it easy for you. We are grateful for your time and energy, so we aim to make testing quick, efficient, and hopefully fun!!
The release plan is as follows, and we hope to stick to this timeline unless we encounter any major hurdles:
- September 30 – First beta for Thunderbird for Android
- Third week of October – first release candidate
- Fourth week of October – Thunderbird for Android release
Download the Beta Image
Below are the options for where you can download with Beta and get started:
We are still working on preparing F-Droid builds. In the meanwhile, please make use of the other two download mechanisms.
Use the Testing Checklist
Once you’ve downloaded the Thunderbird for Android beta, we’d like you to check that you can do the following:
- Automatic Setup (user only provides email address and maybe password)
- Manual Setup (user provides server settings)
- Read Messages
- Fetch Messages
- Switch accounts
- Move email to folder
- Notify for new message
- Edit drafts
- Write message
- Send message
- Email actions: reply, forward
- Delete email
- NOT experience data loss
Test the K-9 Mail to Thunderbird for Android Transfer
If you’re already using K-9 Mail, you can help test an important feature: transferring your data from K-9 Mail to Thunderbird for Android. To do this, you’ll need to make sure you’ve upgraded to the latest beta version of K-9 Mail.
This transfer process is a key step in making it easier for K-9 Mail users to move over to Thunderbird. Testing this will help ensure a smooth and reliable experience for future users making the switch.
Later builds will additionally include a way to transfer your information from Thunderbird Desktop to Thunderbird for Android.
What we’re not testing
We know it’s tempting to comment about everything you notice in the beta. For the purpose of this short initial beta, we won’t be focusing on addressing longstanding issues. Instead, we ask you to be laser focused on critical bugs, the checklist above, and issues could prevent users from effectively interacting with the app, to help us deliver a great initial release.
Where to Give Feedback
Share your feedback on the Thunderbird for Android beta mailing list and see the feedback of other users. It’s easy to sign up and let us know what worked and more importantly, what didn’t work from the tasks above. For bug reports, please provide as much detail as possible including steps to reproduce the issue, your device model and OS version, and any relevant screenshots or error messages.
Want to chat with other community members, including other testers and contributors working on Thunderbird for Android? Join us on Matrix!
Do you have ideas you would like to see in future versions of Thunderbird for Android? Let us know on Mozilla Connect, our official site to submit and upvote ideas.
