Changing name of mail account does not change the two letters in account chip.

[rak-rak]

Checklist

• I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same bug report.
• I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.

App

Thunderbird for Android and K-9

App version

8.0b4

Where did you get the app from?

Other

Android version

Android 14

Device model

Samsung Tab S9

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to settings, select an account
2. In general settings of this account, change the account name, especially modify the first 2 letters

Expected behavior

The 2 letters in account panel will follow that change.

Actual behavior

Nothing happens in account panel

Logs

No response

[kewisch]

See also related #8238 . We originally chose the domain because account names are the email address by default, and the username part is likely to be the same (e.g. myname@ for each domain you have). Here is what could be done as part of this issue:

• Default the account name to the domain part of the email, with the first letter capitalized. So gmail.com becomes Gmail, thunderbird.net becomes Thunderbird, mail.co.uk becomes Mail. This won't catch all the edge cases, but is a bit more useful than defaulting to the email address and showing it twice (which we also wanted to fix).
• If the account name is solely an email address (catches legacy case), then show the first two letters from the domain
• If the account name is not an email address, or only in part, take the first two letters of the account name. "TB Thunderbird" becomes TB. "Thunderbird" becomes TH
• In Show picture profile on account list #8238 we can add an "Account Picture" option in the general settings, which takes precedence above the letters, and can be removed.

Does this sound sensible? @wmontwe I'm also curious to your thoughts since we talked about this earlier and you did the initial implementation.

[rak-rak]

Thanks for reply.

• If the account name is not an email address, or only in part, take the first two letters of the account name. "TB Thunderbird" becomes TB. "Thunderbird" becomes TH

This is what I tried and what I described above. This is what does not work unfortunately.

account name GMX becomes GM
account name Gmail becomes GM
Changing a name will not take affect for the account chip.

• In Show picture profil on account list #8238 we can add an "Account Picture" option in the general settings, which takes precedence above the letters, and can be removed.

Would be great.

[rak-rak]

@kewisch
Found a discussion on this bug on thunderbird.topicbox.com:
https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/android-beta/T2e38c777291a33fa/two-letter-abbreviations-for-accounts-name-change

[wsmwk]

Another topicbox https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/android-beta/T6125a54b00eef620-Mf0d67caa0b87fd32be755ae0

[SunnyZebra]

Just got the K9 update to version 8.0. Same problem.
Previously at least you could select from the whole address. Now you have to check color or toggle through all mail accounts.

Since account nickname likely will be longer than 2 characters, i wish for a custom avatar selection.
From the thunderbird topicbox thread that rak-rak found icon/avater usage seems to be a future plan?

#8238 (comment)

We originally planned to add a picture but went with this for time reasons. The picture could come from the contacts, or potentially setting one.

Hopefully they won't simply get the avatar of the telephone book entry. All accounts are saved in the same entry as alternate addresses and would as a result show the same avatar.

[lamyergeier]

I have 4 gmail accounts and every icon is GM. Please let user decide what letters to display.

[kewisch]

As noted above we're definitely interested in improving on this, I know this is very common feedback. See #8381 (comment) in case it gets lost.

[Neolyum]

I'd like to add another Edge-Case; the email from my university is with "mailbox" in front (so mailbox.university.tld), hence it gets shown as MA which is not making sense here.
Would it not be an idea to just add a text field in the settings to just make it user input which two letters (the more the better btw) should be shown here?

[marcRDZ]

Hi, I'm just landing on this project searching how to help and this appears first as 'good first issue'.
@kewisch Could you assign to me and let's see how it goes?

[IMSoP]

Note that this has also been raised by many users on the K-9 Mail forum, here: https://forum.k9mail.app/t/dont-show-account-selector-by-default-or-at-least-enable-account-pics/10645/27

It would be helpful if someone from the development team could post to that thread, if only to link to this issue and say that it is under discussion.

---

The main problem seems to be that this assumption does not hold for some users:

We originally chose the domain because account names are the email address by default, and the username part is likely to be the same (e.g. myname@ for each domain you have)

Many users have multiple inboxes from the same provider, so the exact opposite rule would apply; for instance, they have a number of GMail accounts for different purposes, or shared accounts on a company domain.

Maybe the simplest solution would be to let users set their own abbreviations for each account. Much simpler than finding a unique image for one, and saves trying to come up with a set of rules that fits everybody's usage patterns.

[marcRDZ]

Well, IMHO a quick workaround could be assign first two letter from name or email address, may be checking the list of accounts already stored to avoid repeating, in the same way it picks a color and finish account setup.
Beside this, adding a new option on the setup process and may be also on account settings to let the user customizes the chip abbreviation or pick an image would be an amazing feature to implement at a slower pace. Checking the code I found a pending refactor on AccountCreator and may be it should be taken into consideration at the same time.

[wsmwk]

Some support requests

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1468672
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1472139
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1470062
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1472422

[wsmwk]

Also documented at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/two-letter-abbreviations-for-accounts-on-thunderbird-for-android/idi-p/74591 with 14 votes. But it is also only two weeks old, and so it is the second highest trending idea on Connect.

[nutzlichsein]

indeed that is confusing

I have 3 gmail account and 1 icloud account
the chips on the left side only show IC and GM, GM, GM
in the mean time, I differentiate their colors.

I hope it will show the initial for account name or user selected profile picture

[Bbawt]

Trying to improve this within the chip seems limiting to me. There is only so much you can do to with 2 letters. I would suggest looking at how BlueMail for android does it, which provides a small text naming field below each chip. The chip can remain showing what type of email account (gmail, outlook yahoo etc.) and the text easily differentiates between them.

[kkocdko]

IMO, the avatar is USELESS for most of people, right? No one will care about the avatar, email is just a text address, not a picture avatar.

[kewisch]

An email is long, an avatar is short and concise. On mobile we don't have the space luxury we have on desktop, so some sort of short form is necessary.

For anyone new to this issue, please refer back to #8381 (comment) and also a big thank you to @marcRDZ for starting to work on this issue in #8492

[sirtao]

@kkocdko I wouldn't say "useless" as much as "extra".
It can be a good way to discern the various accounts and\or add some color\personalization, and some people have a easier time to identify at a glance different figures\color sets than characters\words, especially as phone screens have quite the limited space as kewisch correctly pointed.

The main issue here is more about Thunderbird arbitrarily deciding on the setting and not letting the user customize it, and I say this as somebody who much prefers the previous K9 drop-down system.

On this point: @kewisch I know you said going back to the K9 system would take time\effort, but given the general non-positive reaction please evaluate the risk of spending even more time\effort changing and fixing the new system multiple times and thus resulting in a unstable, and thus worse, user-experience.
I'll also ask: did anybody complain about the K9 system? Because from what I have read this really feels like a change just to change stuff to present a new polish to say "Here the All-New, All-Different Thunderbird, which is DIfferent and therefore New and Better!".
In short: marketing. To the bloody hell with it.

[kewisch]

I don't know if is helpful to blame marketing here. Product! Designers! Engineering discussing shortcuts to meet deadlines imposed by engineering mangers! Engineering Managers! ;-) But calling names isn't going to get us any further.

The technical reason to change was alignment with Material 3, and then we used the opportunity to design something more modern and with less technical debt. No change is perfect on the first try, and change is hard. A fix users may find acceptable is likely a matter of a week or two, going back to the old design and making it Material 3 compliant will take considerably longer. We'll be testing these changes on beta so users have a chance to see how stable it feels.

[yutotakano]

I've also just received the update from F-Droid and jumped from v6 to v8, came across this issue.

The technical implementation will surely be more complex, but I would love if it's not letters but icons we can choose out of a large set of presets! E.g. a work bag icon, an animal icon, etc.

I think ultimately any letters in that little space of the avatar will be difficult to use smoothly from a UX point, since we have to distinguish text that are selected from a pool with low entropy ([A-Z0-9] * 2). Icons or even picture selection would add the satisfactory level of customisation.

On a slightly related note, having 'Unified Inbox' under each of the account header is slightly confusing, given it's a single inbox that surpasses any account-level distinction. Maybe Unified Inbox can be put in the account switcher bar as an icon at the top?

[marcRDZ]

Hi @kewisch ,
I'm thinking if a mid-point between your suggestions on #8381 (comment) and my first approach would have sense for you.
I mean:

• Default the account name extracting initials as I've implemented plus domain capitalised, so 'firstname.lastname@email.com' becomes 'FL Email' and 'firstnamelastname@email.com' becomes 'FI Email'. This would work as a suggestion for user on initial setup and not when displaying avatars on drawer.
• When account name is an email address taking first two letters from domain.
• If the account name is not an email address displaying first two letters of that field as is.
• Start working ASAP on Show picture profile on account list #8238 only adding that feature on account general settings but considering also implement it on initial setup options whenever possible.

[sebbu2]

Could we get back to K-9 Mail version <8 design ?
Also, the 2 letters are hidden by the "plus de 99" badge for unread mails.

[UK-Keef]

Just want to add some urgency to this... I have used TB on my PC forever :) and nothing else beats it, so have been awaiting the Android app for 2 years. Tried K9 but stuck with Bluemail until now, however I have multiple Gmail accounts (7) and GMX accounts (5) and my work colleagues & extended family (I am their support guy) also have similar situations so this issue is actually a no-go scenario for me. I installed the app, loved the data transfer from PC utility, and but then had to remove the app until this is resolved....

[madb1lly]

Hi all,

Adding my voice here, I don't like this, not only because it's change but because it doesn't work, for all the reasons which all the posts above point out.

I'd prefer to see my whole email account ID, which is whatever@this.domain. However if we really can't have that (there's no technical reason why not) then how about 3 letters instead and make it user-defined?

Cheers 🙂

[develroo]

FWIW I felt the way K9-mail did it was fine. Icons should be optional or at least configurable

[rptb1]

I'm sorry to play this card, but I'm disabled and using colours or pictures or icons to distinguish things increases the cognitive load of dealing with email significantly. It's already hard. I need words. I need to see the account name and the domain name. The menu in K-9 Mail 6.804 was fine. If you really want the sidebar, please add the menu back as well. Thank you.

[qlum]

I would love to see a good solution for this.
Will just list my usecase in terms of e-mail addresses I use, I would like to be covered.
Below an anonymised list roughly illustrating the addresses I use:
someperson600@gmail.com
someperson300@gmail.com
anotherthing@gmail.com
someperson@somedomain.tld
someperson@someotherdomain.tld (starting characters of the two domains are indeed the same)

Currently my list would via by above sample show
gm
gm
gm
so
so

Ideally the solution would be able to differentiate between all of these.
Be it via a field to customize what is being shown or a custom image.
There is no real way of extracting anything that covers all of these from just the e-mailaddress.

A stopgap could be picking the first characters of the account name, possibly falling back to the current method if the account name is the e-mail address.

Hope this is helpful.

[sirtao]

While we are on this topic: do NOT move away from the list of account the currently selected account. Just highlight it.
I really dislike icons moving around for... no reason, really.

[Bbawt]

While we are on this topic: do NOT move away from the list of account the currently selected account. Just highlight it. I really dislike icons moving around for... no reason, really.

I agree and added this as a "new idea" in Mozzilla Connect. Labelling accounts and having them shift around are two issues that need fixing.

[Ted-T-east]

Comments as to identity of “accounts” with limited space in left-side column.
Below is an example of the current Android Thunderbird presentation.
Also, shown is the current Android Blue mail presentation.
Candidly, I don’t care if the underlying email account is Yahoo, Gmail, Proton, private server, etc.
But, I do wish to click on an email account directly.
Thus, it would be useful to display a user supplied two three character identity.
How?
Add one more field to the basic account data, wherein the user can input two or three characters to more easily identify one account vs. another.
For various reasons, essentially segmentation of various “classes” of emails. I have multiple accounts. A two or three character identifier would really assist me or anyone to move directly to a target account. Showing my email accounts with a two of three character acronym identifier is far better than multiple accounts displaying YA or GM with only a color to remind server, but NOT which email account.
My email accounts and my identifying characters if the Thunderbird team would accept and implement the foregoing.
FAM Family
FRN Friends
VET Veteran
PUR Purchases
MED Medical
NWS Newsletters
MST Master
MUS Music
WFE Wife
EVE



Events

[sirtao]

@Bbawt would you link the Mozilla Connect Idea here, too, so I(we) can upvote it? I seem unable to find it but I might just be blind.

[Bbawt]

@Bbawt would you link the Mozilla Connect Idea here, too, so I(we) can upvote it? I seem unable to find it but I might just be blind.

Well its odd...I could only find a link via a notification from Jon the Community Manager: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/keep-accounts-from-moving-around-when-selecting-account/idi-p/76610

When I go looking for it just under the New Ideas list it does not show up.

[Ted-T-east]

Here's the link to the posting I made. #8381 (comment) Below is my posting which can be shared. Below is an example of the current Android Thunderbird presentation. Also, shown is the current Android Blue mail presentation. Candidly, I don’t care if the underlying email account is Yahoo, Gmail, Proton, private server, etc. But, I do wish to click on an email account directly. Thus, it would be useful to display a user supplied two/three character identity. How? Add one more field to the basic account data, wherein the user can input two or three characters to more easily identify one account vs. another. For various reasons, essentially segmentation of various “classes” of emails. I have multiple accounts. A two or three character identifier would really assist me or anyone to move directly to a target account. Showing my email accounts with a two of three character acronym identifier is far better than multiple accounts displaying YA or GM with only a color to remind server, but NOT which email account. My email accounts and my identifying characters if the Thunderbird team would accept and implement the foregoing. FAM     Family FRN     Friends VET     Veteran PUR         Purchases MED       Medical NWS       Newsletters MST       Master MUS       Music WFE       Wife EVE        EVENTS On 11/9/2024 3:26 PM, Epsilon555 wrote: If you don't like it, pin it here. Maybe this is no longer a place for users, but a garden for those who want to profit. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#8381 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A3COVF5PQSY6IW32RPYEY23Z72K3RAVCNFSM6AAAAABQL3UB4KVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDINRWGUYDCMBUGQ>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Ted-T-east]

One more "limk" https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-android-account-chip-icon-better-identification-of/idi-p/77589#M41895 On 11/9/2024 5:15 PM, Ted_T wrote: Here's the link to the posting I made. #8381 (comment) Below is my posting which can be shared. Below is an example of the current Android Thunderbird presentation. Also, shown is the current Android Blue mail presentation. Candidly, I don’t care if the underlying email account is Yahoo, Gmail, Proton, private server, etc. But, I do wish to click on an email account directly. Thus, it would be useful to display a user supplied two/three character identity. How? Add one more field to the basic account data, wherein the user can input two or three characters to more easily identify one account vs. another. For various reasons, essentially segmentation of various “classes” of emails. I have multiple accounts. A two or three character identifier would really assist me or anyone to move directly to a target account. Showing my email accounts with a two of three character acronym identifier is far better than multiple accounts displaying YA or GM with only a color to remind server, but NOT which email account. My email accounts and my identifying characters if the Thunderbird team would accept and implement the foregoing. FAM     Family FRN     Friends VET     Veteran PUR         Purchases MED       Medical NWS       Newsletters MST       Master MUS       Music WFE       Wife EVE        EVENTS On 11/9/2024 3:26 PM, Epsilon555 wrote: If you don't like it, pin it here. Maybe this is no longer a place for users, but a garden for those who want to profit. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#8381 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A3COVF5PQSY6IW32RPYEY23Z72K3RAVCNFSM6AAAAABQL3UB4KVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDINRWGUYDCMBUGQ>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[kewisch]

Hi folks, if you want to give 9.0b1 a try, there is a fix that will take the initials from the account name that you can customize in the account settings.

Let us know if this is better! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.thunderbird.android.beta 1

[rak-rak]

@kewisch Thanks. Works. But we need 3 letters to distinguish accounts from each other.

[Bbawt]

Thanks for this fix, and glad to hear its a patch for further work "We're looking to improve on this further (icons, anyone?), but wanted to get a fix out before the year ends. Many thanks to a community contributor for providing the patch on this one!" - from Mozilla Connect.

I do hope the final approach will not just be about the icons - e.g. 3 letters or different icons. Would much rather be able to label the account by text directly underneath the icon. Custom one or two word labels visually are more instantly recognizable than icons in various forms or 2 or 3 letters within them.

[kewisch]

I can't promise we'll have all the customization options, but we'll try to find a good balance between customizability and design constraints. For three letters, when we have icons, you could create an icon with three letters and use that. We also considered a more wide layout that could be useful especially for tablets and foldables where the full name would be visible.