Drafts will show a new message if you are composing in an open Write message window and have either manually saved or auto saved a new message to the Drafts folder.

It will stay bold so that you know the save worked and to remind you that there is a saved draft of an email which has perhaps not been sent This is normal.

This was not the case in older versions of TB. I'm able to remember that the mail is unsent when the compose windows is open (!). This "feature" is highly annoying - is there a way to disable it?

I'm also unsure if the problem exists in my other mailbox as well - but then again, I don't send mail from that account that often...

It is not a problem. This behaviour has been around for years.

re'I'm able to remember that the mail is unsent when the compose windows is open (!).' Well surprising as it may seem, so can I. But how do know it has been saved without physically looking in the drafts folder or if you close the compose window and need to return to the email.

All folders are designed to show new mail and to show the folder in bold when there is new mail with a bold number. This has been the standard since forever and if this was not working then I would say there is a problem.

You can make a decision on whether you want to save a draft of an email. After all this only occurs when you issue an instruction to save this new draft either manually or via the auto save.

You can switch off the auto save:

• Tools > Options > Composition > General tab
• uncheck 'Auto Save every xx minutes'
• click on ok to save changes.

As this is an IMAP mail account and I presume you are saving to an IMAP Drafts folder and not eg: Local Folders Drafts; you could see if there is anything you can modify via the webmail account itself. But as far as the server knows you have just saved a new message in the server Drafts folder, so the behaviour is normal and expected.

I have to admit I hadn't upgraded TB in a while because I hated TB 3. I only upgraded to the newest version recently because I upgraded my PC, and installing TB 2 didn't seem like a good idea. Luckily, TB 24 is a lot more like TB 2 than what TB 3 was.

I don't care about autosaves, as long as the compose window is open. The compose window is my copy and the drafts folder is only a "backup." If I decide to close the compose window, TB asks me whether I want to save/keep the draft, making sure I know that the draft is saved.

Yes, the drafts are saved in an IMAP folder.

This behavior was definitely not present in TB 2, and it doesn't make sense to me. Only *unread* mail should be marked, but I have (obviously) read my own draft. TB should not treat a read, but unsent, draft as unread. It's as simple as that.

Come on, there has to be a hidden config setting for this...

I just found this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=673400

Looks like this was introduced in TB 5.

This add-on will hopefully solve the issue: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/imap-draft-unread/

Well, it seems you already found a solution with that add on.

I'm thinking maybe the problem has to do with whether you have that particular "Drafts" folder setup as a proper Drafts folder in the settings for that account. Although it must be, otherwise it wouldn't save there.

Another thing you could check is by right-clicking the account name, then click "Subscribe..." and check in the list if the Drafts folder you're using is the one offered by the email provider or it is one you made up. I'm thinking that if it's one you made up, it might be treated as a regular folder which is checked for new mail and therefore produces notifications. If so, just setup the actual Drafts folder offered by your email provider instead by subscribing to it and changing the settings of the account for Drafts folder. I hope that's not too confusing.

By the way, Toad-Hall is right in that newly saved messages would automatically be marked as new mail by default. I think it's because since you just created it, then it's new. I guess that's the logic behind it.

The Bugzilla link I posted describes the issue in detail. My setup is fine, the behavior was changed in TB 5 or so. Other people are annoyed as well, and hopefully there will soon be a setting to get the old logic back. Until then, this add-on should help (haven't tried yet).