Hello Thunderbird team,
I would like to request an enhancement to the message list (thread pane) behavior in Thunderbird.
Currently, when using “Group by sort”, Thunderbird uses a single column as both the grouping key and the sorting key. This creates a limitation when trying to organize emails efficiently.
Use case
Many users rely heavily on Tags (Labels) to classify emails (e.g. Personal, Client, Urgent, Invoices, etc.).
What we would like to achieve is:
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Group messages by Tag
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Sort messages by Date/Time (descending) inside each group
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Keep everything inside the native Inbox message list (no alternative view, no external panel)
Current limitation
If we:
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Group by Tag → the chronological order inside each group becomes inconsistent
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Sort by Date → grouping by Tag is no longer possible
There is currently no way to define:
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a grouping column
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AND a secondary sorting column
This makes it impossible to have both:
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clean visual grouping (by tag)
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and correct chronological order (by date)
Proposed improvement
Introduce support for:
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Primary key: Group by column (e.g. Tag)
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Secondary key: Sort by another column (e.g. Date)
This could be exposed as:
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“Group by: Tag”
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“Sort within groups by: Date (Descending)”
This would:
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Greatly improve productivity for professional users
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Remove the need for workarounds (virtual folders, multiple inboxes, external views)
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Allow more advanced but still native inbox organization
This request does not require UI scripting or message list injection — only better control over the grouping/sorting logic already present in Thunderbird.
Thank you for considering this enhancement.
Best regards
