Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbolt new mail notification for macOS does not display preview text

more options

Hello, my new mail notification only displays the sender, not the preview text.

It seems there is no place to set it up, can you help me?

Sorry, it does not have English, I used Google Translate

Hello, my new mail notification only displays the sender, not the preview text. It seems there is no place to set it up, can you help me? Sorry, it does not have English, I used Google Translate
Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

MAC OS seems a bit different from Windows OS. Are you using Thunderbird 78.1.0 ?

Image shows a button 'Application icon options' Click on 'Application icon options' buttons to see if it offers: 'show an alert' which you can 'customise' to display 'Message Preview text'

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (9)

more options

The notification subject is the recipient: support@domain.com The content of the notification is: 1 new message from "Sender"

more options

Chosen Solution

MAC OS seems a bit different from Windows OS. Are you using Thunderbird 78.1.0 ?

Image shows a button 'Application icon options' Click on 'Application icon options' buttons to see if it offers: 'show an alert' which you can 'customise' to display 'Message Preview text'

more options

Thank you for your reply.

No, it is not as described to you.

It has no option to customize notification text, only icon option

I am using Thunderbird 78.1.0

Sorry, I cannot change the display language of Thunderbird. You can only view my localized text.

more options

I have found some information to help.

On newer releases of macOS, the alert configuration is done via System Preferences > Notifications, not within Thunderbird itself.

How to Display notifications when a message arrives in the selected mailbox.

To be displayed, the alert style must be set to Banners or Alerts for Mail in Notifications preferences. To open Notifications preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Notifications.

I found a link that shows images: https://www.lifewire.com/new-email-alerts-thunderbird-1173081 Scroll down to the section: 'How to Configure Thunderbird Alerts in Thunderbird on a Mac '

more options

Thanks, I tried to adjust it to banners or alerts.

However, the text preview cannot be displayed.

The screenshot shows: 2 new messages from Mozilla Support Forum, Amazon.cn.

more options

Found information that MAC Notification Center limits the size of a notification to 256 bytes (0.256KB). Good explanation at this link: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136004/how-can-i-show-the-full-notifications-in-the-notification-center

Sorry, I cannot help you to get a better solution.

Windows 10 OS does not suffer the same issue as alerts are dealt with within Thunderbird, so whilst message is still truncated, it is not truncated as much as in a MAC.

more options

I have read this article, but it does not appear to be truncated because the subject of the email is not displayed either.

It seems that it has no place to set it up.

more options

I decided I was missing something, maybe I read it wrong, so I've just read your information again which says the translation is : 2 new messages from Mozilla Support Forum, Amazon.cn.

This is not an individual email message, so it cannot display Subject or content of email. It is merely a notification that in Thunderbird you have received two messages. All MAC notifications I've seen are very short and do not allow much in text. Even error messages from the server are so brief, you do not really know what the error said. But you would expect each message to be displayed as an individual message showing sender subject and some text.

It would seem to be a real problem with using a MAC because a MAC has control over all notifications.

So I've checked with reports of bugs to see if there is anything mentioning this issue. I found this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1629311


In WinOS, you usually see some thing like; email address received X messages. then it will list the messages in this format: Subject - sender Brief preview of part of content Subject - Sender Brief preview of part of content

All error pop up messages/notifications are shown in full.

more options

Thank you, it seems that this problem cannot be solved by setting.