Push notifications have become the main pain point for Thunderbird users on Android. The team openly acknowledges this in a progress report published recently, with Herbal7ea, who leads mobile app development, devoting an entire section to explaining why the situation isn’t straightforward to fix and how they plan to tackle it.

Why email is different from everything else

The core issue is that an email client doesn’t work like almost any other app. Most services that send notifications, from banking apps to messengers, run their own server infrastructure. When something happens, those servers forward the notification through Google’s or Apple’s systems, which then deliver it to your device. Thunderbird has no backend of its own. It depends on whatever email provider you choose, whether Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Proton, or Hotmail, each with their own SMTP and IMAP implementations and no common standard for push notifications.

To work around this, the app uses polling, checking the provider’s servers at regular intervals to see if new messages arrived. When they do, it generates a local notification on your device. It works, but it’s far less efficient and responsive than real push notifications, and it drains your battery faster.

What changed on Google’s side

The recent trouble centers on the polling mechanism itself. Running periodic checks in the background requires specific permissions from the operating system, and according to Herbal7ea, Google recently changed the rules governing these processes. This triggered the issues users saw in recent months, with notifications arriving late or not at all. The team says they’re working on a solution and promises concrete updates in the next report.

There’s a more encouraging long-term perspective too. The JMAP protocol, designed as a modern evolution of IMAP, includes native notification mechanisms closer to what traditional apps use. The catch is it’s far less common than IMAP, which still dominates among email providers.

The rest of the roadmap

Fixing notifications has become the top priority, but it’s not the only thing on the agenda. The Android roadmap for 2026 includes significant code refactoring to modernize aging architecture, cut the complexity slowing development, and improve both the message list and reading screens. On iOS, work continues on fundamentals like account management, IMAP, SMTP, MIME, OAuth, and encryption, with the team targeting a release before year’s end. They’re currently looking for a senior engineer to speed things up.