The font-settings in ThunderBird are terrible: the default settings are ugly, and the GUI is too broken to let you change them. Fortunately, if you hand-edit the config files, you *can* change the fonts, as much as you like.
Sadly, the options etc are undocumented, and easy to get wrong. Incidentally, not only does TB have *no* help or documentation (why not?), if you go to the online “knowledge base” and search for something fairly obvious like “fonts”, you get nothing – not even the usual 3-years-out-of-date result that’s normal for this app:
For future reference, here’s how I made my fonts go from “ugly” to “delightful”.
Changing fonts in Thunderbird 3 – theory
For reference, in case TB fixes their fonts in future, here’s what you’re supposed to do, but doesn’t quite work yet:
- Go to settings
- Go to Display tab
- Click on the Advanced button in the Fonts section
- Configure font options, per-language
In reality, here’s what happens
- “Western” languages (Europe, USA, etc) in TB often do not use the “Western” font settings
- …rather, they use the “unicode” font settings
- …which aren’t available in the TB GUI
- …and they don’t always use them as expected
Changing fonts in Thunderbird 3 – practice
There are a couple of things that DO work, and which you need to set anyway, so:
- go to Setttings -> Display tab -> font-settings -> “advanced” button
- Choose Serif or Sans-Serif (bizarrely, this is a GLOBAL setting, even though the GUI claims it is a LOCAL setting) – this will affect all other font choices
- *try* setting the font-sizes, I think it sets global defaults (but … looking through the config file, those “defaults” appear to be over-ridden in most places … by default)
NB: TB is … confused … when it comes to font choice. The obvious way to make a desktop app is to ask the user “which font do you want to use in place X?” (where X = “email body”, “compose window”, “menu items”, “dialogs”, etc). Windows has been doing this for more than 15 years. TB instead arbitrarily declares different parts of the app as “Proportional” or “Monospaced” or some combination of the two. Even if you tell it not to use monospaced in certain places, it mostly ignores you. It doesn’t tell you which is which, and it’s not documented, you have to work it out by trial and error.
Edit the master config file:
- go to Setttings -> Advanced tab -> General -> “Config Editor” button
- NB: another bug in the GUI – that button appears to be some local setting; it’s not, its the most important part of all the “Advanced tab” settings; I’ve no idea why they hide it like this
- use a filter of either “.serif” (sic) or “sans-serif” depending on which fonts you want your TB to use
- (I think you’re nuts if you use anything but sans for email, but it’s a personal choice)
- The two you need to set for “email bodies” are:
- font.name.sans-serif.x-unicode
- font.name.sans-serif.x-western
- The two you need to set for “GUI dialogs” are:
- font.name-list.sans-serif.x-unicode
- font.name-list.sans-serif.x-western
- The *one* you need to set (but could also set in the main GUI) is:
- font.default.x-western
(I’m still using TB 3; I need a desktop client at the moment, and I find myself still using it. TB 3.0.4 seems to run well on OS X. It’s fast enough and with little enough RAM that it’s easy to leave running and forget about it; earlier versions of TB on OS X would kill your Mac, and had to be force-quit frequently. With this version, I keep forgetting I’ve got it running, until it sends out a Growl…)
8 replies on “Thunderbird 3: fixing the fonts”
Thanks.. Once I was in config and filtered for fonts I could see that some of the values were modified from standard (possibly because I had modified them or an add-on had). The non standard font entries (highlighted in bold) I just reset and now my body text is back to the normal font.
This helped me out.
I really agree that initial TB 3 config sucks and that it looks ugly, but with your help it got a little better.
Thanks… You helped me out and saved me a lot of time.
Am I the only one experienced raw hatred for TB3? The display went from functional to incomprehensible.
The default size is 16… what’s that all about? It renders like it’s a 12, and what I really want is plain old arial 10 like it used to show. I’m frustrated.
This is amazing tips that will help me.
Great reference to config my fonts problem in TB3
It really do some ‘quick’ help in fixing fonts. Thank you for these technical details.
I have TB 3.1.10.
There is quite a variation from your instructions:
There is no “Setting” option, but there is “Options”. Is this the same?
There is no “fonts” section, but there is a formatting section.
When you say “Choose Serif or Sans-Serif ” do you mean in the “proportional” drop-down box?
Which “font-sizes” are you referring to: “proportional” or “monospace” or both?
Sorry – the bugs in TB are so huge right now I’ve given up on using it. I don’t know how any of this needs to be changed for later versions (or even if it will continue to work).