Android Thunderbird: One Year Retrospective 📱

If you can believe it, Thunderbird for Android has been out for just over a year! In this episode of our Community Office Hours, Heather and Monica check back in with the mobile team after our chat with them back in January. Sr. Software Engineer Wolf Montwé and our new Manager of Mobile Apps, Jon Bott look back at what the growing mobile team has been able to accomplish this last year, what we’re still working on, and what’s up ahead.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro
00:54 One Year Retrospective: What Worked & What Didn't
02:47 Closing the Gap with the Desktop Experience
04:00 Synchronization, Old UI & Dark Mode Challenges
05:57 The Difficulty of Rewriting Core Code
08:31 Why Move to a Monthly Release Cycle?
11:11 The "Carpaccio Method" for Development
13:27 The Struggle with "Technical Debt"
17:14 How a Lack of Documentation Slows Down Fixes
20:00 Lessons from Android for the New iOS App
23:41 Developers' Wishlist: A Modern UI & Smarter Features
26:40 Developers' Wishlist: Better Search & Sync
27:50 The Secret Buried Feature: A Powerful Search Engine
30:12 How K9 Users Differ from Thunderbird Users
33:34 How Many People Use Thunderbird for Android?
36:10 How New Team Changes Have Impacted the Workflow
38:29 Community Contributor Shout-outs
43:06 Balancing an Old App (Android) vs. a New App (iOS)
47:02 Who Replies to App Store Reviews? (A Community Effort)
52:44 The Roadmap for Next Year (Android & iOS)
55:03 Wrap-up & Thanks