Enviar correos electrónicos y leer noticias con Thunderbird

We recommend using Thunderbird in Tails for:

  • Reading and writing emails

  • Reading RSS and Atom feeds for news and blogs

For more documentation, visit the official Thunderbird Support website.

The chat features of Thunderbird don't work in Tails.

  1. Installing Thunderbird as additional software
  2. Configuring an email account
  3. Gmail
  4. Reading RSS and Atom news feeds
  5. Enhanced privacy
  6. Using Thunderbird in another language
  7. OpenPGP encryption

Installing Thunderbird as additional software

Thunderbird is no longer included by default since Tails 7.8 (May 2026).

You can install Thunderbird as additional software.

A new version of Thunderbird is released in Debian shortly after each Tails release, because both Tails and Thunderbird follow the release calendar of Firefox. As a consequence, until Tails 7.5 (February 2026), the version of Thunderbird in Tails was almost always outdated, with known security vulnerabilities.

By installing Thunderbird as additional software, the latest version of Thunderbird is installed automatically from your Persistent Storage each time you start Tails.

To install Thunderbird as additional software:

  1. Choose Apps ▸ Tails ▸ Persistent Storage to open the Persistent Storage settings.

    1. Create a Persistent Storage if you don't have one already.

    2. Make sure that the Additional Software feature is turned on.

    3. Turn on the Thunderbird Email Client feature.

    4. Close the Persistent Storage settings.

  2. Restart Tails.

    To reopen this page after restarting Tails, choose Apps ▸ Tails ▸ Tails Documentation and go to Documentation ▸ Uncensored and anonymous Internet ▸ Emailing and reading news with Thunderbird.

    Tails detects that you have both the Thunderbird Email Client and Additional Software features of the Persistent Storage turned on and automatically adds Thunderbird to your list of additional software.

    Tails also tries to install as additional software the language package that corresponds to the language of this Tails session, if it exists. To use Thunderbird in another language, see using Thunderbird in another language.

  3. Connect to the Tor network.

    Thunderbird is downloaded and installed in the background after you connected to the Tor network.

    This first installation can take several minutes. During this time, no Thunderbird launcher is available in the Apps menu.

    If you are comfortable with the command line and set up an administration password when starting Tails, you can execute the following command to track the progress of the download and installation:

    sudo journalctl -f -u tails-additional-software-upgrade.service

  4. After Thunderbird is installed, choose Apps ▸ Internet ▸ Thunderbird to open Thunderbird.

    Thunderbird will be reinstalled automatically every time you start Tails. Future installations will be much faster since Thunderbird is already downloaded to your Persistent Storage.

Configuring an email account

  1. When opening Thunderbird for the first time, an assistant appears to help you configure and access your email account.

  2. Escribe tu nombre, dirección de correo electrónico y contraseña en los campos correspondientes.

  3. Haz click en Continuar.

  4. El asistente intenta configurar automáticamente la configuración adecuada para conectarse a tu proveedor de correo electrónico basado en tu dirección de correo electrónico.

    Si la configuración automática falla, consulta con tu proveedor de correo electrónico sobre cómo configurar tu cuenta de correo electrónico manualmente.

  5. Si la configuración automática funciona, puede que igualmente tengas que especificar qué protocolo usar para conectarte a tu proveedor de correo electrónico, ya sea IMAP o POP.

    • Con IMAP, Thunderbird se sincroniza constantemente con el servidor y muestra los correos y carpetas que están actualmente almacenados en el servidor. IMAP es mejor para acceder a tus correos desde distintos sistemas operativos.

    • Con POP, Thunderbird descarga los correos electrónicos que están en la bandeja de entrada del servidor y posiblemente los borra de allí. POP es mejor si sólo accedes a tus correos desde Tails y los guardas en el Almacenamiento Persistente.

    Para saber más, mira también esta comparación entre POP e IMAP por Riseup.

Gmail

You can use your Gmail account with Thunderbird in Tails.

  1. Make sure that you have 2-Step Verification turned on in your Gmail account.

    See Google Account Help: 2-Step Verification.

  2. Configure the new account as IMAP when Thunderbird asks you to choose between POP and IMAP.

Reading RSS and Atom news feeds

On top of reading emails, you can read news feeds that use the RSS and Atom standards in Thunderbird.

To create a feed account:

  1. Choose Menu ▸ Account Settings from the main window of Thunderbird.

  2. In the Account Settings tab, select the New Account button, and then Feed Account.

  3. In the Feed Account Wizard, click Next and Finish.

    A new feed account named Blogs & News Feeds appears in the sidebar.

  4. Click on the Manage Subscriptions button in the right pane.

  5. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, enter the URL of the news feed that you want to follow in the Feed URL field.

    For example, to subscribe to the Tails news feed, enter the following URL.

    https://tails.net/news/index.en.rss

    Sites often have a feed icon that points to their RSS or Atom feed.

    If a site has no feed icon, right-click on the home or news page of the site in Tor Browser and select View Page Source in the shortcut menu. In the source of the page look for a link of type application/rss+xml or application/atom+xml. Not all sites have a news feed.

    RSS and Atom are similar standards and their differences don't really matter to readers.

  6. Click Add.

    Thunderbird verifies and downloads the content of the feed.

  7. Close the Feed Subscriptions dialog and the Account Settings tab.

  8. A new feed account named Blogs & News Feeds appears in the sidebar of the main window of Thunderbird.

Enhanced privacy

Thunderbird en Tails está configurado para tener privacidad y anonimidad adicionales.

Por ejemplo, Thunderbird en Tails:

  • Quita información sobre el idioma de tu sesión o tu corrector de ortografía de los encabezados de los correos electrónicos que envías.

  • Removes information that could identify you as a Tails user from the headers of your emails.

  • Sólo permite protocolos seguros y desactiva los inseguros, como SSLv3.

  • Desactiva tecnologías de rastreo como cookies y JavaScript cuando miras correos o feeds en HTML.

These enhancements are inherited from the former TorBirdy extension.

The email addresses that you write to are stored in your address book by default.

To stop collecting outgoing email addresses automatically, open Settings ▸ Composition and turn off the option Automatically add outgoing email addresses to my collected addresses.

Using Thunderbird in another language

To use Thunderbird in another language, you can install the thunderbird-l10n-lang package using the Additional Software feature. Replace lang with the code for your language. For example, vi for Vietnamese.

Tails automatically installs the language packages for Arabic, German, Spanish, Farsi, French, Hindi, Bahasa Indonesia, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Simplified Chinese.

List of available Thunderbird language packages

OpenPGP encryption

Revisa también la documentación oficial OpenPGP in Thunderbird - HOWTO and FAQ.

Setting up a Primary Password (recommended)

In Thunderbird, OpenPGP private keys are not protected by a passphrase. That's why we recommend that you set up a Primary Password.

With a Primary Password, your private key is encrypted in your Thunderbird profile and is only unlocked while Thunderbird is running. If your Thunderbird profile is stored in your Persistent Storage, then your private key is encrypted twice: once by Thunderbird in your profile and a second time by the encryption of the Persistent Storage.

  1. Elige Menu ▸ Configuración.

  2. Elige Privacidad y Seguridad.

  3. En la sección Contraseñas, selecciona la opción Usar una contraseña principal.

  4. In the Primary Password dialog, enter your Primary Password and click OK.

Importing an existing private key

Thunderbird uses a different keyring than GnuPG.

If you already have an OpenPGP private key outside of Thunderbird, follow the instructions below to export it from GnuPG and import it into Thunderbird.

Export your private key using Kleopatra

Desde el escritorio:

  1. Elige Aplicaciones ▸ Accesorios ▸ Kleopatra.

  2. Select the private key that you want to migrate to Thunderbird.

  3. Choose File ▸ Backup Secret Keys… and save this private key to your Home folder.

  4. Close Kleopatra.

Import your private key in Thunderbird

En Thunderbird:

  1. Elige Menú ▸ Configuración de cuenta.

  2. En el panel izquierdo, identifica la cuenta que corresponde a la clave privada que deseas importar y elige Cifrado de extremo a extremo.

  3. En el panel derecho, haz clic en el botón Agregar clave....

  4. In the dialog that appears, select the option Import an existing OpenPGP Key and Continue.

  5. Click the Select File to Import… button and choose the private key that your exported from Kleopatra.

  6. En el siguiente cuadro de diálogo, asegúrate de que tu clave privada esté en la lista y que la opción Tratar esta clave como una clave personal esté seleccionada.

  7. Haz clic en Continuar, ingresa la frase de contraseña de tu clave privada (si corresponde) y haz clic en Continuar nuevamente.

    Tu clave privada ahora debería aparecer en el Cifrado de extremo a extremo de la configuración de tu cuenta..

  8. Selecciona tu clave privada para habilitar el cifrado OpenPGP para esta cuenta.

Generating a new OpenPGP private key

  1. Elige Menú ▸ Configuración de cuenta.

  2. In the left pane, identify the account for which you want to create a new OpenPGP private key and choose End-to-End Encryption.

  3. En el panel derecho, haz clic en el botón Agregar clave....

  4. In the Add a Personal OpenPGP Key dialog, choose Create a new OpenPGP Key.

  5. Review the settings in the next dialog, click the Generate key button, and then click Confirm.

    Tu clave privada ahora debería aparecer en el Cifrado de extremo a extremo de la configuración de tu cuenta..

Encrypting an email

To prevent you from sending unencrypted emails by mistake, Thunderbird in Tails is configured with the option Enable encryption for new messages turned on by default in the account settings.

When composing an email:

  • If the Encrypt toggle button is on, Thunderbird will encrypt the email before sending.

    Thunderbird warns you if you miss the key of some of the recipients or if you still have to accept some of their keys.

    Choose Security ▸ Key Assistant to see the keys of the receipts and solve any issue.

  • To send an unencrypted email, turn off the Encrypt toggle button.