Customizable keyboard shortcuts for Thunderbird

[daanl]

Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Productivity can be drastically improved by performing often-used actions through keyboard shortcuts. By including full keyboard shortcut modification, and maybe even custom actions to which shortcuts can be assigned, everyone can create and set their preferred hotkeys for specific tasks, like moving an email to a specific folder.

Examples of applications that do this really well are Visual Studio Code and Vivaldi.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[mike_a_sr]

All I want is for the escape key to close the last opened message. This is the biggest frustration since switching from Outlook

[choss38]

Oh yes ! please give us the ability to create Keyboard shortcut from menu fonctions !

My dream:  have a shortcut for striketrough font format !

An other option is to let us customize toolbar...

[Cr8zy_Ivan]

I second this motion.

[天王寺屋]

Official FAQ
Keyboard shortcuts - perform common Thunderbird tasks quickly
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-thunderbird

[doubletrouble]

Not being able to customize keyboard shortcuts is the thing that I dislike the most about Thunderbird.

I can't tell you how many times I used the single-key shortcuts by accident to archive emails or mark them as junk. This has actually caused me to miss a payment before and I had to pay a late fee.

I wish this could be customized. VSCode is a great example. Any action lets you add your own keyboard shortcut, the configuration gets saved to a JSON file. Plus, you can use Ctrl+Shift+P to bring up a menu that allows you to list and search every possible action and it displays its keyboard shortcut.

Having something like this would make Thunderbird better for customization and it would also make it easier to transition to it from other email clients. For example, you could have a preset with Outlook keyboard shortcuts that would allow people switch from Outlook to Thunderbird and be just as productive without the need to relearn everything they know.

[sapphireblues]

Full customization would be great, but what I really need is the ability to turn off shortcuts.

Having the "A" key archive messages is a nightmare if you use the keyboard for most things and accidentally switch to the wrong window and start typing.  Same for "J" but the outcome of that is less drastic.

PLEASE add config to disable shortcuts!

(I tried the tbkeys-lite add-on, but unsetting the "A" key stops it from working in the quick-filter and search bars as well - you just can't type the letter "a" when it's unset!)

[rouxken]

Would it be possible to add a preset of keyboard shortcuts to Thunderbird ?

For example, I'm used to using the Gmail shortcuts and I would like to be able to configure the shortcuts based on Gmail ones.

Then, I would like to modify few of them manually. But the initial reference is the Gmail reference.

Thanks

[dm62]

How about a function key to run filters on a folder?

Better still - give users the power to map their own function keys.  F8 is worthless to me -  I don't ever use the message pane!

Thanks!

[envision_employ]

Could someone from the Thunderbird team explain why this has not been implemented already? The default shortcuts are bad and it often feels like playing Russian Roulette. One accidental single key press can archive an email or mark it as junk. This not a mild annoyance. This is a serious issue. This should be treated as case of potential data loss. I don't understand how come nobody in the team has seen this as an issue for more than two decades!

The best case would be to allow the users to:

• Customize the shortcuts.
• When launching the application for the first time, allow to select from predefined presets, e.g., Thunderbird, Outlook, Gmail and other popular email clients/providers.

I know this thread has not received many upvotes and I believe that this is a poor indicator of the actual user experience. Mozilla Connect is great for getting feedback from users who already like Thunderbird and are dedicated enough to create and upvote suggestions. This is not something that an average person would do. Typically, someone would run into an issue like this, curse and then either continue to suffer it or switch to another email client.

Dear Thunderbird team, please prioritize this. Make it easier for people to switch to Thunderbird without the need to relearn the keyboard shortcuts or experience those accidental actions with the default shortcuts.

[dm62]

At some point I found the tbkeys-lite addon, which helped me resolve my F8 headache and allowed me to map "Run FIlters on this folder" to a key combincation.

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/thunderbird-128-context-menu-functionality-regression/m-p... - https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/small-thunderbird-feedback/m-p/66316

But tbkeys-lite https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/tbkeys-lite is incompatible with Thunderbird Beta 137 currentlyThunderbird Add-on Database Analysis https://thunderbird.github.io/add-on-reports - https://thunderbird.github.io/add-on-reports/atn-tb128.html
What if my add-on is broken? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-add-ons-frequently-asked-questions#w_what-if-my-add...