Mozilla today announced a new email client for Android units known as K-9 Mail. The cell app is being introduced as a part of Mozilla’s Thunderbird family of open-source desktop e mail and chat programs.
Okay-9 Mail isn’t new. The supply code for it used to be first printed 2008, and MZLA Applied sciences got it and its logos, and it employed the open supply venture maintainer of Okay-9 Mail as a full-time developer to support the app and to lend a hand regularly transition it to Thunderbird cell.
MZLA Applied sciences, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Basis, stated it is usually recently comparing the improvement of a Okay-9 e mail shopper for iOS units.
The advance crew for MZLA Applied sciences plans to support the e-mail characteristic set to extra carefully resemble that of its Thunderbird desktop e mail shopper.
The ones deliberate enhancements come with account setup the use of Thunderbird account auto-configuration, in addition to folder control, strengthen for message filters, and synchronization between desktop and cell variations of Thunderbird, Mozilla stated. (Okay-9 Mail is to be had for download through these various sites.)
“In the long run, Okay-9 Mail will become into Thunderbird on Android, as soon as sure construction milestones had been completed which align it carefully with Thunderbird’s characteristic set and visible look,” Okay-9 Mail Challenge Maintainer Christian Ketterer stated in a blog post. (Ketterer is healthier recognized within the Mozilla open-source developer group as cketti.)
Thunderbird is a loose and open-source e mail, calendaring, newsfeed, and chat shopper with greater than 20 million lively per thirty days customers throughout Home windows, macOS, and Linux.
Recently, Android cell customers have a number of email and chat options, together with Google’s Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and ProtonMail, an end-to-end encrypted e mail carrier.
Ryan Lee Sipes, Thunderbird Product Supervisor, stated operating with the Thunderbird e mail crew to broaden the brand new cell shopper made extra sense than creating a cell shopper from scratch. “Becoming a member of the Thunderbird circle of relatives lets in Okay-9 to turn into extra sustainable and provides us the sources to put into effect long-requested options and fixes that our customers need,” Sipes stated. “In different phrases, Okay-9 Mail will leap to bigger heights with the assistance of Thunderbird.”
Mozilla plans to supply Firefox Sync as one solution to permit customers to safely sync accounts between Thunderbird and Okay-9. The characteristic is anticipated to be carried out in the summertime of 2023.
Andrew Cornwall, a senior analyst with analysis company Forrester, known as the Okay-9 Mail annoucement “vital.”
“Okay-9 used to be one of the vital first third-party e mail purchasers on Android, and it advanced a big consumer base amongst customers who needed to stay monitor of a number of inboxes. About ten years in the past it used to be a few of the maximum beneficial third-party e mail purchasers for Android, and a large number of long-time customers have caught with it. As of lately, it’s indexed as having 5M+ downloads on Google Play,” Cornwall stated.
Construction of Okay-9, then again, stalled and the code used to be mainly in “repairs mode,” he famous. In January, a brand new 6.000 liberate went out to the Play Retailer, a transfer that surpised many customers. The discharge incorporated an up to date consumer interface that inquisitive about a unmarried inbox relatively than a number of inboxes. As a substitute of being welcomed, the in focal point disappointed many current customers, Cornwall stated.
Any other fear for current customers of Okay-9 Mail used to be its strengthen for OAuth2, an authorization protocol that permits the customer to get entry to e mail sources of the consumer with out sharing passwords.
“This has been a perennial grievance (since no less than 2015) and the problem has now been compelled: Google has disabled the normal approach that almost all Okay-9 Mail customers used to get entry to their Gmail,” Cornwall stated. “Customers are left with workarounds involving two-factor authentication for Gmail, and no actual workaround for Outlook when organizations require an OAuth2 login.”
Total, Mozilla’s adoption of Okay-9 Mail can be welcome to its current customers, a lot of whom use Thunderbird on their desktops for the same multiple-inbox workflow, Cornwall stated.
“Lately, some Okay-9 Mail customers have switched to the use of Okay-9 Mail for his or her non-Gmail mail and the Google Gmail app to test Gmail. The considered a brand new Google Play liberate from Mozilla with Oauth2 fixes could also be the encouragement that current customers want to stick round,” he stated.
Okay-9 may have a equivalent feel and appear to Thunderbird’s present desktop app, except sure purposes.
Thunderbird for Android to start with won’t strengthen calendars, duties, feeds, or chat just like the desktop app, cketti wrote in a Q&A incorporated as a part of his weblog put up. Ketterer stated the developer crew is first operating on “an awesome e mail revel in,” and is thinking about one of the simplest ways to supply Thunderbird’s different capability on Android. “However recently [we] are nonetheless debating how perfect to succeed in that.”
For example, he wrote, one means so that you can use Thunderbird’s desktop e mail characteristic set is to easily sync calendars, after which customers can use their most popular calendar utility on their instrument.
“However we need to speak about this throughout the crew, and the Thunderbird and Okay-9 communities, then come to a decision what the most productive manner is,” Ketterer wrote.
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