Arch Linux

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,806

How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

A few days ago I noticed cli completion of ~/T didn't give me ~/Temp as intended.

Checking the directories under $HOME revealed the existence of a directory Thunderbird .
I didn't create it, it was empty so I deleted it.

Unfortunately every time I start thunderbird (.desktop, /usr/bin/thunderbird, /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird ) it recreates this folder.

My thunderbird profile is in the same location it has always been ( ~/.thunderbird ) and works fine.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

StarWolf3000

Member

Registered: 2025-06-23

Posts: 60

Re: How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

External bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2007074

Seems to be related to XDG changes.

Last edited by StarWolf3000 (2026-01-26 12:51:54)

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Mainboard: GIGABYTE B550 AORUS ELITE V2 | CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X | RAM: 32 GB
GPU: GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB (580.119.02 proprietary) | Display: BenQ BL2405 1920x1080
Kernel: 6.18.8 stable | Boot Manager: GRUB2 | DE: KDE Plasma | Login Manager: SDDM | Compositor: KWin

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,806

Re: How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

Thx, bookmarked.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

StarWolf3000

Member

Registered: 2025-06-23

Posts: 60

Re: How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

Still present in Thunderbird 147.0.1 (but Firefox 147.0.1 has it fixed already). Hoping for fix in 147.0.2 or greater.

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Mainboard: GIGABYTE B550 AORUS ELITE V2 | CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X | RAM: 32 GB
GPU: GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB (580.119.02 proprietary) | Display: BenQ BL2405 1920x1080
Kernel: 6.18.8 stable | Boot Manager: GRUB2 | DE: KDE Plasma | Login Manager: SDDM | Compositor: KWin

Nikolai5

Member

From: North West, England, UK

Registered: 2024-01-27

Posts: 267

Re: How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

Was just about to make a post seeing if others had seen this too and because Mozilla really prefer if it's replicable on multiple PCs, nice to see its not anything I've done and that there's already a bug report with Mozilla.

Thanks

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Desktop: Ryzen 7 1800X | AMD 7800XT | KDE Plasma

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,806

Re: How to prevent thunderbird from creating ~/Thunderbird folder ?

Thunderbird 147.0.2-1 still does this.

https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/comm-centra … b7d2988a76 has been merged and supposedly solves the issue.

Unfortunately the new code appears to only change the created folder to thunderbird with a small t, not ensure it's not created.

imply_option("MOZ_APP_PROFILE", "Thunderbird", when=target_is_windows | target_is_osx)
imply_option("MOZ_APP_PROFILE", "thunderbird", when=~target_is_windows & ~target_is_osx)

Looks like we need to create a custom .desktop file to ensure the empty folder gets deleted after closing thunderbird.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky