T-Bird Mail Annoyance

October 20, 2005 2:12 PM

How do I turn off new mail notification in Thunderbird?

I don't want to be notified when I get new mail. The "show an alert" and "play a sound" boxes under the "when new messages arrive" in the mail and newsgroups options window are unchecked; I don't get a sound, but an envelope icon appears in the system tray. I've tried setting the "mail.server.default.notify.on" preference to false, no change. Changing the "update.showSlidingNotification" setting to false doesn't work either. The box for "check for new messages every X minutes" is unchecked, but new mail is constantly arriving without my clicking on "Get Mail".

Thunderbird 1.0.6, Windows XP; the mail is fetched from an IMAP server.

posted by Wet Spot to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I would guess it is because you're staying connected to the IMAP server... would it be unpleasant to go "offline" when you don't want to see new mail?
posted by rxrfrx at 2:17 PM on October 20, 2005

Best answer: Set the system tray icon to "Always Hide" in the taskbar prefs.
posted by kindall at 2:52 PM on October 20, 2005

If all you want is not seeing the notification, kindall's answer above is all you need. Now, if "Check for new mail every X minutes" is unchecked, no mail should arrive. if you are sure you don't have one active account with it turned-on, I think it may be a bug.
posted by nkyad at 3:00 PM on October 20, 2005

Following up on nykad's answer: You'll still get new mail with IMAP with "Check for new mail every X minutes" unchecked. This is because the IMAP connection is persistent and the server actively notifies the client when new mail comes in. I guess to avoid this they could add an option to make Thunderbird ignore that.
posted by zsazsa at 3:25 PM on October 20, 2005

Or you could turn off IMAP-PUSH on your server, which is the bit that notifies your client when you have new mail.
posted by blag at 5:20 PM on October 20, 2005