I have been looking for an email client on Linux after being tired of Gmail and Outlook web clients.

I had Thunderbird installed on my system and thought I’d give it a spin. I set up POP for my email accounts and it worked fantastic… For a total of 2 hours, after which I realised that searching in Thunderbird is simply not going to work for me. I need to search by attachment name and sometimes even by text inside attachment and unfortunately Thunderbird can’t do that (I think I tried an extension too but it made the UI super clunky to the point that I couldn’t even understand how to navigate it anymore).

Does Betterbird or any other email client fix this problem? I’m willing to try other options if they are FOSS.

Thanks

  • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    I use Betterbird as my main email client so I tried out the attachment searching. Searching by attachment name seemed to work well, but it doesn’t look like it searches for the text within the documents, at least not for PDFs. Not sure if there’s like an OCR extension or anything that would do it, but yeah just the base Betterbird install doesn’t do it as far as I can see.

  • bluefishcanteen@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    5 hours ago

    I have had the exact same issue as you. Thunderbird is great, but their attachment search is not. I spent a lot of time looking for a way to make it work and what I settled on is using a third party program to serve this function: Recoll (https://www.recoll.org/index.html).

    It should be available in your distro’s package repository.

    You’ll need to download your messages to your computer, but it will work in the way that you expect search to work (I.e. search by filename, search by text within attachments, search by text within emails). Setup is straightforward. You just need to point it to the Thunderbird profile directory where your emails are saved. As a bonus, you get good desktop search for all the other files on your computer too.

    Sadly (don’t throw anything at me), the only desktop email program that I have found that does search properly is Outlook desktop. On Linux, that is obviously a non-starter.

    • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Honestly I might try this. Or maybe I can use grep lol. We’ll see how it fits in my workflow, I’m comfortable in the CLI but haven’t really entertained the idea a CLI email client before. Thanks

  • www-gem@lemmy.ml
    3·
    5 hours ago

    You may find what you need here or there.

    Like @a14o@feddit.org I would personaly recommend the power of neomutt and notmuch, but it’s not a GUI option if that’s what you’re looking for.

  • bubbalouie@lemmy.ml
    2·
    6 hours ago

    sudo apt install claws-mail

    Fast, reliable, insanely functional - weird formats. Yes it has a calendar, works great.

  • a14o@feddit.org
    7·
    10 hours ago

    Where indexing and searching mails is concerned, notmuch is the best I’ve seen. Do note that this is not an e-mail client, it only indexes, tags and searches (following the “UNIX philosophy” of doing one job well).

    I personally use it with neomutt as a mail user agent, which is almost certainly not what you want. Notmuch supports other clients but they’re all pretty arcane.

    So this is not a recommendation, just a glimpse into advanced e-mail setups I guess.

  • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    13 hours ago

    I’ve always liked Thunderbird. Geary is also nice. Not sure if it can attachment search.

    You can filter messages with attachment on Thunderbird btw

    • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      4·
      13 hours ago

      Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment. Unfortunately that’s a deal breaker for me. I need it to search the Content-Type field at the very least and I don’t think it can do that without an extension

      • 𝚝𝚛𝚔@aussie.zoneEnglish
        61·
        10 hours ago

        Yes but I can’t search by the name of the attachment.

        I just searched for text thats in an attachment filename and it worked - with a caveat. I have a filename called “PMASUP236 - Operate Vehicles In The Field.pdf” on an email. There is no reference to the PMASUP236 in any other part of any email.

        If I search “PMASUP236”, it returns the email as a result.
        If I search “SUP236” it does not.
        If I search “Operate Vehicles” it returns that email (along with a heap of others containing the word “Operate” and “Vehicles” in any order).

        Admittedly this is on Windows at work, though I do run Thunderbird on Linux at home. Will have to try it there to confirm.

      • ISOmorph@feddit.org
        4·
        11 hours ago

        You can use the FiltaQuilla extension to add content-type as search category. It’s a pretty powerful yet straight forward extension

  • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    13 hours ago

    I’ve been having a grand time with sylpheed.

    Mostly because thunderbird changed its presentation layout and i took it personally. Plus sylpheed is lighter weight.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    Betterbird? Unsure if it can search Attachments am sure it shows attachments on top it’s a fork of thunderbird

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    513·
    13 hours ago

    Any time I want to watch my emails I just go to the web ui for it. I doubt any 3rd party client will ever come close to what google and Microsoft offer for their own email accounts.

    • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      101·
      13 hours ago

      I’d prefer not to go to their Web UIs because of how much tracking is present on those sites (adding rules and filters to ublock origin for Gmail nearly killed me). I’d prefer a FOSS option.

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        52·
        13 hours ago

        … they already have your emails. Not only that, but just about everything else they could possibly want to know about you.

        Unless you plan on moving to a more private provider I wouldn’t worry about that.

        • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          51·
          13 hours ago

          Agreed, and I do plan to move to other providers. I should add that I find a desktop client convenient, and I don’t mind the Thunderbird UI at the moment. Unfortunately, lack of a single feature breaks it for me

            • golden_zealot@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              2 hours ago

              My understanding with Tuta is that you cannot configure it to work with a third party desktop email client though, you are locked in to using theirs. You can’t configure a Tuta email address to work with mutt or something for example I believe as there is no regular imap/pop like there are for services that don’t use E2EE, or services that have some form of bridge for that like Proton did.

              Maybe I am misinformed though.