If things don’t look right do double check that you’ve edited the css file and remembered to save your changes.Īny further issues head over to the Github project page.The deficiencies in its visual appearance are no secret to anyone Thunderbird, a design that has not been renewed in a long time and that maintains colors, textures and fonts that makes it difficult for new users to get caught up with what I consider to be one of the best email managers today. Launch Thunderbird and the style should be applied instantly. On line 13 replace the 'themes/system.css' with the name of the theme (‘dark.css’, ‘fulldark.css’, ‘light.css’, etc) that you wish to use. Inside the “chrome” folder find the ‘ userChrome.css‘ file and open it in a text editor. Move the ‘chrome’ directory to this folder: It will be located ~/.thunderbird/.default/. This is a hidden file (hit Ctrl + H to see hidden files and folders). Open your Thunderbird user config folder in a new Nautilus window or tab. zip archive and rename the ‘thunderbird-monterail-master’ to ‘chrome’. It’s much simpler, too!ĭownload the thunderbird-monterail.zip folder from Github:ĭownload the Thunderbird Monterail Themes Update: See our post on how install Monterail Thunderbird themes for support in Thunderbird 60. How to install the Thunderbird “monterail” themes These are drawn from the (incredible) Font Awesome project. svg icons to replace the default Thunderbird icons.

See, these aren’t actually themes so much as custom userChrome.css files that change the look of Thunderbird as it starts up.Īll 4 of of the theme files make use of the EncodeSans Narrow font (which is included in the details below) and uses a custom set of. Now for the drawback-y bit: installing these theme(s) isn’t exactly one-click affair.īut the results, as you can gawp at above, more than make the effort worth it, I think. The “Full dark” theme The thunderbird light theme with Pop GTK Custom Thunderbird Themes Images here are pictured with Ambiance: There’s also a striking “full dark” version for those of you who really dig dark themes. The result is almost as seamless as the stock look. Two of these, ‘light’ and ‘dark’, pick up the accent, background and highlight colours from whatever GTK theme you’re using. Three additional themes are included, all based on the Monterail design. You can see how, despite having to work within the limitations of Thunderbird’s existing feature set and theme capabilities, just how close the recreation comes to the original mockup: The mock up css for the venerable e-mail client’s window chrome, having been inspired by the well-received mockup shared by Polish design company Monterail. Github user spymastermatt has crafted custom Thunderbird.

That rather swish Thunderbird redesign we recently spotlighted? It’s now a real, working theme.

Thunderbird mail themes