I’m long K9 user, and I was aware of it becoming Thunderbird, but I need to clarify what should I do to easy eventual transition, hopefully without having the deal with all my K9 settings…

Today K9 turned into Thunderbird Beta for Testers, however there’s already an app called that way Thunderbird Beta for Testers showing up on f-droid. Thoug the actual ID of each differ (com.fsck.k9 vs. net.thunderbird.android.beta).

What should K9 users do, to avoid losing its current settings (accounts, folder settings, encryption and so on)? Should we remain using the K9 app, and hope that when it goes away then the thunderbird app replaces it somehow automatically and pick all accounts and settings? Should this period when the two apps with the same name coexist be used to install thunderbird beta for testers, hope that it pick all settings from K9 up, and then remove K9?

It’s somehow confusing, I was originally hoping at some point K9 just turned into thunderbird, but at once, automatically, without still having two apps, so I’m wondering what’s next. For now I’m just still using the K9 app with thunderbird name…

Thanks !

Edit 1: Many thanks for those who replied, at least I don’t have a google account, and no need to inherit the OAuth to google, or any other of such account for that matter, although I could remain to K9 I migrated to Thunderbird official release (no beta) without issues. It sounds like a good opportunity to migrate to Thunderbird.

Edit 2: It’s sad that the OAuth can not be inherited, though understandable. For those who were just using TB or K9 for a long time with gmail, and the account gets into the infinite dependency loop of requiring a device already logged in, given the stupid security question has no answer, then perhaps it’s time to ditch google and look for an alternative, I haven’t found anything useful to help around there. Google actually sent a message indicated it has protected the user from herself, and inhibited her attempt to reach her own account. Meanwhile, just staying with K9 seems OK, since it’s still there (just a metadata name corrupted but the app ID remained K9 still).

  • kixikOP
    3·
    1 month ago

    OK, many thanks !

    I’ll just do nothing for now then. I hope if at some point a migration is required, it’s sort of automatic, f-droid just starts using the Thunderbird app rather than the K9, without user intervention other than performing the f-droid upgrade, one and that would be it. But we’ll see.

    If you ask, knowing it’s the same thing, I would have gone with just one app, replacing the other one, and that would be easier and clearer, :)

    Thanks a lot again !

    • _ed@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      1 month ago

      I updated to thunderbird from k9 on fdroid- accounts etc imported ok.

        • kixikOP
          1·
          1 month ago

          Ohh, it needs to import though. I was afraid in case there would be sort of two different directories over the same data, or that on TB dir it would be to start fetching stuff. But it seems it literally copies over the directory contents, which is fine, since the then the other app could easily been removed.

          And it works with TB non beta, I guess it works with beta for testers a well (though I like the release, and see how it goes). I’ll be using non beta for now, a bit behind, I prefer to use releases rather than beta releases, and on f-droid I enabled unstable upgrades…

          Anyone played with push vs. pull on TB? On K9, I ended up having both. With the last years changes, it removed the push option selecting from the fetching configs, but the push could be selected/deselected from each folder, and I keep them both. Pulling makes the requirement of not having restrictions on battery usage though.

          Not sure if that’s getting any better with TB (non beta or beta), and if push has gotten any better. In the end, imap push/idle pretty much depend on the server, and not so much on the client I’d guess…

          Thanks !

          • kixikOP
            1·
            1 month ago

            Sadly, when having a gmail account, the migration is not possible, if the user doesn’t keep permanently logged in somewhere. TB is not taking the current K9 OATH, and tries to establish it’s own authentication, which on a K9 + desktop TB user not logging often to google at all, it’s really almost impossible to login to gmail, since it ask as security the user 1st phone number, which could have never been registered to google, and beyond that it requests to use a different device which is already logged in, but it you go to the desktop, and attempt to login, it does exactly the same thing, the same stupid question or requesting for another device. So it gets into a loop of devices which can’t be resolved. And for this other user I tried to setup TB for, they don’t authenticate near often to google, but they use both desktop TB and K9 quite well.

            For now, for such users, until they figure out how the hell to login to their google account again, they better don’t try migrating to Thunderbird, since the import functionality is not quite enough to get google mail working fine, again if the user doesn’t login to google often. A bit sad, though it makes sort of sense, since the apps registered to google would be different. Sad in the sense that an already working setup for gmail on K9 can not just be imported as is to TB, and keep just working.

            While K9 remains working, there’s no issue for such users though. Hopefully that doesn’t happen,

            It works great when not having a google/gmail account, :)

        • _ed@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          1 month ago

          No that’s a different one. There’s also Thunderbird: Free your inbox (Vers 8.0) which I assume is the release.

          • kixikOP
            2·
            1 month ago

            correct, that’s the official release, the other is beta for testers…