Default sorting in Thunderbird

Posted on 2025-01-20

By default Thunderbird sorts e-mails in a descending order (newest at the top), I want to do the opposite. It's possible to do this folder-by-folder but I want this to be the default behavour.

I couldn't get this to work with a already existing installation of Thunderbird so I had to remove all settings by removing (on MacOS) ~/Library/Thunderbird.

Go to Settings and scroll down to Config Editor. Search for mailnews.default.

Ensure these settings are set like this:

mailnews.default_sort_order -> 1
mailnews.default_sort_type  -> 18
mailnews.default_view_flags -> 1

Close the config editor and add an account. Don't close Thunderbird in between since any changed settings will be reverted.