Probably Thunderbird has more features than Apple's typical "think different and do it, eh, our way only", but not sure Thunderbird was meant to specifically have advantages over the macOS email program.
I expect both do what it says on the tin and it's a matter of preference and what you're used to: if you come from Linux, odds are you didn't pirate macOS email program and emulated it, so you're used to Thunderbird already. Or if you want to have the same client on your work PC as well, you can install Thunderbird anywhere.
Here’s one big advantage - I can send from any email on my domain by setting that email address in a second by just clicking on “from” field and I don’t even have “add” this permanently in setting somewhere. Try doing that in Mail.app.
I can do this from Apple mail, I have multiple accounts on the same domain, and other domains. I even have an exchange account added, any email I send I can just click the “from” field and pick any of my emails or domains from the dropdown
Don't you need to set-up the accounts in the first place? In Thunderbird it's just an ad-hoc text entry field, useful for when you are using a catch-all account and you need to respond from a random service specific email address.
For example say my account is dugite-code@example.tld but fetchmail pulls in my gmail emails. If I want to send from house-repairs@example.tld or dugite-code@gmail.com I don't need to configure the three accounts separately I just edit the from field as I'm composing the emails.
You literally can't do what I said in my comment and you explained this in your comment "pick any of my emails or domains from the dropdown" (which means you had added those beforehand) and you still said you can do that. I hope it was just an oversight and not the belief :)
FairEmail does that even better, though unfortunately it's mobile only. There's a setting you can enable and then it will, when replying, match the email address to which the email was sent.
I so sorely miss this on Thunderbird because I literally never use the default email address (everyone has a unique address so I don't need to filter, aka have my computer guess what's, spam). There may once have been an extension but if I do remember that correctly then I expect the developer gave up after fixing it for the fifth time when they broke backwards compatibility again.
I don't get it. On first boot my iCloud email is already setup, I add my other three email accounts (2 gmail, 1 self rolled). In the Mail compose window I have a dropdown that lets me choose any of the accounts to reply. I can also use Apple's new hide my email option.
Okay so you can proxy via Apple as well as choose from Alice@example.com, Bob@example.net, or Charles@example.org. What if you want to be Joseph@example.net today? In Thunderbird, you click on the From field and change the name, et voila. From the comment above, I presume that on macOS email, you will need to dig into settings.
My use for this is to give everyone a unique address (bitcointalk.org@lucb1e.com is one that was leaked to spammers already anyway). I block senders that send spam. No need to ever wait for spam filtering or check any spam box, because I get spam on maybe three addresses per year and those are easily dealt with
(Of course, your email server will need to allow using arbitrary sending addresses.)
Thunderbird lets you send mail from an account that doesn't explicitly exist. On your Mac Mail app, you need to sign in to three accounts to get three items in the dropdown (Even if you don't have to do it on every machine, you had to do it at one time). Thunderbird lets you make up the From: address on the fly.
They mean an arbitrary "from" email address, useful when you own the domain attached to your address. You can do that in Mail.app, but you need to configure it in advance, whereas Thunderbird lets you type any address directly.
I want this feature too because I use custom addresses, such as booking@mydomain.fr for hotel reservations, and replying with contact@mydomain.fr could be confusing to the receiver.
In Thunderbird, I can directly edit the "From" field to whatever value I want when I send the email.
I can make it a random value such as "abc123456789@example.com" and it will happily try to send it. The email address can also be from a domain I don't even own.
From the Gmail, docs, I have to manually go to settings, enroll the additional email address, then manually have to select the "From" address from the dropdown menu. I cannot put an arbitrary email address (including arbitrary domain). This will have to be done each time I want to have a different from header which means if I want to have a randomly generated email used as the "From" address for every one of my emails, it's not going to be easy in the Gmail interface.
Actually quite often. I'm very surprised users do not use unique email addresses when contacting different companies or vendors to protect against spam if one of your email addresses gets leaked after the company is hacked.
For example, I would use email address A for company A, B for company B and so forth. If company A ever gets hacked, I can just block any emails going to email A and not worry about playing whack-a-mole with the 100s of email addresses that spammers will use.
I can also use the email addresses as a way to auto filter or apply inbox rules.
I'm very surprised users only use 1 email address at a time especially if your email gets leaked once to spammers, you have to start dealing of spam or hoping your email solution has very very good anti-spam measures.
For me, this is just a normal usage of an email client.
I don't do it daily, but it's still often enough usage for me that having to set each one up individually would grind my gears. My own domains setup with catchalls and many custom name@ across services. I might be unusual though!
Not that unusual; I've been doing the same since the 1990s.
For each organisation, project or person I interact with over email I issue a unique ${RANDOM}.${ORG}@mydomain.org across many separate domains.
Combined with procmail rules on my email server I can more easily:
1. efficiently filter and file emails into per-org, per-topic or per-project sub-directories
2. have all IMAP4 clients see the same view since filtering/filing is done server-side
3. block any addresses that receive spam without accidentally binning other email
4. know for certain there has been some kind of breach if emails arrive from another source
5. have some clients subscribed and sync-ing to only a (small) sub-set of IMAP4 folders
6. find emails related to specific orgs, projects, or people
I use Qmail's Maildir format (one file per email) on both server and Thunderbird which makes even manual 'grepping' for obscure or complex search parameters an easily scriptable operation.
I have a simple script accessible via SSH or web that adds the new entry to postfix's virtual table so unknown addresses are rejected - avoids needing to operate a catch-all policy and filter after reception since the SMTP daemon refuses delivery as soon as it sees the RCPT TO:
On the Postfix side using postgrey for grey-listing of unknown SMTP clients cuts almost all spam as well - in fact today I was surprised to see (for the first time in years) Thunderbird marking a project mail-list email as possible spam. I cannot recall the last time Thunderbird did that which I think shows how effective grey-listing on the mail server can be combined with other postfix filtering like reverse MX, SPF, DMARC, etc.
Realistically next time I buy a new laptop it won't be heavily premeditated: the odds are that my old one will die and I'll need something that works that week. I don't want to end up buying another Apple just because I don't have time to switch mail clients.
Obviously a mail client only takes a few hours to set up, but it's not just the mail clients: I try to avoid anything Apple-specific for the same reason.
There is such a thing as off-line. And, with email that can be a good thing for multiple reasons - except when trying to send or receive of course :)
With the current incarnation of Thunderbird there is even a switch you can flip to make the email client offline, even if your PC is not. Believe it or not, that is an extremely valued feature here.
I agree strongly with this. Even on workstation I have the default to Offline and decide when to let it poll the IMAP4 servers - great for not allowing distractions or interruptions except on your own schedule, not someone else's.
With synchronized folders and offline storage it makes composing, reading, and replying easy with outgoing queued until next time connected when out and about with a portable device.
Maybe it's just me, but it is buggy to the point of being unusable every time I try it.
Example: When it is in the middle of popping up suggestions as you compose, it suddenly seems to decide you aren't in the compose window any more and interprets anything you type as a keyboard shortcut (e.g. "n" for new message "e" for archive). Since I type rather fast, this happens to me all the time.
If you ever stop using Apple, you can take your mail with you. I've been using Thunderbird since 2006, first on Windows, then on Linux, and it's still the same profile directory as the original installation.
Well it's Cross platform and not tied into one providers email service, So you have the same PIM (Personal information manager) on all your computers. Theme-able so you can tweak a lot using CSS. And most importantly it's Extensible like Firefox. Some of the more powerful extensions fore example are the sieve editor (for mail servers that support sieve) advanced tagging management, markdown rendering, printing layout tools and templating.
