I've been using Thunderbird for like a decade, but I've been spoiled by Fastmail's web interface so much that I now consider Thunderbird to be one giant mess from a UX perspective.
Half the time I miss-click the first email and sort by subject. In what world would I want to sort my emails by subject!?
Search vs. filter messages, I really don't need two search bars, one is fine.
I'm annoyed that the default sort is oldest to newest, and that I have to change it for each individual folder.
Tabs really don't fit into how I consume my email. Flagging important ones is good enough.
I'd take Geary (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary) over Thunderbird any day, but lack of GPG integration is what's forcing me to stick to Thunderbird.
Yes I agree, the UI is a mess and they have made some bad design decisions. One time I was on train with my network connection dropping constantly and Thunderbird was giving me a model pop-up dialogue each time! It still gives pop-ups for updates. But it's open-source, relatively stable and reliable, and that counts for a lot.
The sad fact is that there is simply no money in building email clients. Email is a legacy technology and arguably no longer fit for purpose. We need a new standard and that's not something that BigTech has delivered yet.
Half the time I miss-click the first email and sort by subject. In what world would I want to sort my emails by subject!?
Search vs. filter messages, I really don't need two search bars, one is fine.
I'm annoyed that the default sort is oldest to newest, and that I have to change it for each individual folder.
Tabs really don't fit into how I consume my email. Flagging important ones is good enough.
I'd take Geary (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary) over Thunderbird any day, but lack of GPG integration is what's forcing me to stick to Thunderbird.