Thunderbird Release Channel is BACK!

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Yes, folks, if you haven’t already noticed, the Release Channel is back as the default channel for Thunderbird, starting with the current release, 136.0!

The notice was posted last month, February 6th, but was just updated a couple of days ago on March 4th! Here’s the link to the news from Mozilla (it will open in a new tab):

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/02/thunderbird-desktop-release-channel-default-download/

And here’s a link to updating instructions for those of you on the Thunderbird ESR channel who want to migrate “back” to the Release channel (it will also open in a new tab):

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/03/thunderbird-release-channel-update/

On the page for how to update, they refer to the ESR channel as the “annual update channel” and they refer to the Release channel as the “monthly update” channel. Scroll down the page until you see the heading titled “How do I switch from annual to monthly updates (ESR to Release)?”. Hint: You have to do a manual install of 136.0 over your current installation of ESR. Follow the instructions on that page and you shouldn’t have any issues.

BEFORE ANYONE ASKS: The ONLY way to go from the 128 version of ESR to 136, the current Release Channel version, is to do the aforementioned manual installation. It most likely will NOT be offered via the built-in updater. As of the current writing, the built-in updater offered me 128.8ESR for an update and nothing else from within 128.7.1ESR.

So, after I backed up my profile, I launched the installer for 136 that I had to download from Mozilla’s site and then selected the “Custom” installation routine so I could not have certain items installed that I don’t want, and so that I could make sure it would install to the correct directory. Once I went through the selections, I clicked the “Upgrade” button and the install/upgrade only took mere seconds to complete, prompting me with a question of whether or not I wanted to launch T’Bird 136, which I did.

After launching 136, it automatically checked for new emails, and I found my Inbox just as I’d left it in 128.7.1ESR. The only thing I had to do was to right click the top bar of the window to re-enable the Menu Bar, which I use frequently.

6 users thanked author for this post.

Zig, Matador, Evit, SB9K, opti1, zat_so

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Thanks for the deets.

 

Has anyone else notice that Mozilla Sec https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/ will show the new version but the official download site will LAG behind for a day or so and still offer only the old vulnerable version. Previous contact with the DevOps team says they are having an issue with replication across their infrastructure.

 

I’ve simply been using the other manual method of finding the update at https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/

Hopefully they fix this because it’s annoying to have to go find the update when it should already be available.

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What drove me to post about the renewed availability of the Release channel was the fact that on Thursday the 6th, I happened to notice that 136.0 was available on Thunderbird.net as a release when I hovered my mouse over the blue “Download” button on the main page!

Granted, that was two days after is was released, but at least it was there!

In the recent past, I’ve noticed a bit of a disconnect on the security bulletin site of Mozilla’s in that usually the product update is out before the bulletin is posted, and that goes for both Firefox and Thunderbird. In this case, though, I’ve been extremely busy away from the computer, so I was “late to the party” as they say, and didn’t bother looking at the bulletins surrounding the release.

 

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