New email notification not working

[Qqmike]

In 14.04, using Thunderbird 38.2 email, I'm not getting a notification as an "i" text pop-up ("show a message") from the Notification widget (in the system tray). I do get a sound played when a new email pops in. In the little circle that shows the number of notifications that have occurred, the new email arrivals is not included in that number shown. All other events (AFAIK) do work OK wrt Notifications (sounds and show message).

On the Notification in system tray, rt-click, Notification settings shows Application notifications checked and File transfers and jobs checked.

K > Apps > System Settings > Application and System Notifications > Manage Notifications, Event source = "New email notify" and there, for "New email arrived," both "play a sound" and "show a message" in a pop-up are checked. I can't see any other likely relevant choices for "Event source" (other than "New email notify").

Any ideas what I'm missing here?

[Rod J]

Hi Mike,

I recently noticed my pop-up new email notifications for Thunderbird stopped too. I'm also using 14.04 and Thunderbird 38.2. I do get the new email sound as you do, but no pop-up.

All exactly as you describe, so you're not alone with this.

I've checked the notification settings in Thunderbird and they are all as I set them to be ages ago. Not sure if the problem is in Thunderbird or Kubuntu.

[Qqmike]

And if you google this issue, lots of posts are 1-3 years old, and many suggest you install all sorts of "notifier"-like packages. Makes no sense to do that unless you know what you are doing. There are many such-sounding packages listed in 14.04 repos. Besides, the message and count indicator was working a while ago (I didn't keep track of the dates). On 8-25-15, there was a Thunderbird update ... maybe it un-installed a needed package, I'll try to check, though I'm no expert doing this sort of forensic thing.

[elijathegold]

I'm another one with this issue and since Thunderbird uses it's own notifications it seems that an update has broken compatibility. Whether that's an API change in KDE/Plasma or a regression in Thunderbird, hopefully another update will fix it fairly shortly. At least the sound alerts me to a mail so it's not the end of the world... yet!

[Qqmike]

The 8-25-15 Thunderbird update probably did it. Not the end of the world, but is nice to see at a glance how many notifications popped in while PC is unattended. Thanks for posting confirmations.

[Qqmike]

Looking through Muon Package Manager, there is the (uninstalled) package "mail notification." Haven't tried it, I'm still fixing the effects of a few experiments I conducted yesterday ((install-uninstall, lost some packages! tracing them down ... )

[elijathegold]

You may not want to install that as it looks to be for evolution:

elija@andromeda-ascendant:~$ apt-cache showpkg mail-notification
Package: mail-notification
Versions: 
5.4.dfsg.1-13 (/var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_binary-amd64_Packages)
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_binary-amd64_Packages
                  MD5: 6eee469996225ece2182603100f268fc
 Description Language: en
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_i18n_Translation-en
                  MD5: 6eee469996225ece2182603100f268fc
 Description Language: en_GB
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_i18n_Translation-en%5fGB
                  MD5: 6eee469996225ece2182603100f268fc


Reverse Depends: 
  mail-notification:i386,mail-notification
  mail-notification-evolution,mail-notification 5.4.dfsg.1-13
  gnome-icon-theme,mail-notification 5.4.dfsg.1-2.2
Dependencies: 
5.4.dfsg.1-13 - gnome-icon-theme (0 (null)) gnome-keyring (0 (null)) gstreamer0.10-tools (0 (null)) libgnomevfs2-extra (0 (null)) notification-daemon (0 (null)) gconf2 (2 2.28.1-2) gconf-service (0 (null)) libc6 (2 2.14) libcairo2 (2 1.2.4) libdbus-1-3 (2 1.0.2) libdbus-glib-1-2 (2 0.88) libgconf-2-4 (2 3.2.5) libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (2 2.22.0) libglib2.0-0 (2 2.35.9) libgmime-2.6-0 (2 2.6.4) libgnome-keyring0 (2 2.20.3) libgnome2-0 (2 2.17.3) libgnomevfs2-0 (2 1:2.17.90) libgtk-3-0 (2 3.0.0) libnotify4 (2 0.7.0) libpango-1.0-0 (2 1.14.0) libsasl2-2 (0 (null)) libssl1.0.0 (2 1.0.0) libx11-6 (0 (null)) libxml2 (2 2.7.4) fetchyahoo (0 (null)) getlive (0 (null)) mail-notification-evolution (0 (null)) mail-notification:i386 (0 (null)) 
Provides: 
5.4.dfsg.1-13 - 
Reverse Provides:

[Qqmike]

What about this, from the GUI Muon Package Manager Details tab:

mail-notification works with system trays implementing the freedesktop.org System Tray Specification, such as the GNOME Panel Notification Area, the xfce4 Notification Area and the KDE System Tray.
...
Mail Notification features include:

• multiple mailbox support
• mbox, MH, Maildir, Sylpheed, POP3, IMAP, Gmail and Evolution support
• Mozilla products (Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, ...) mailbox support
• SASL authentication support
• APOP authentication support
• SSL/TLS support
• automatic detection of mailbox format
• immediate notification (depends on your settings)

• HIG 2.0 compliance


Note: Evolution support is available with mail-notification-evolution.

[Qqmike]

(I fixed the stuff I broke yesterday, deleted (they were removed by Muon, not be me) yesterday but re-installed today psensors, vlc-plugin-notify, and python-notify! As I said in a post above, makes no sense to experiment with packages unless you really know what you are doing!)

[elijathegold]

I don't think I'll be installing it, look at the dependencies:

elija@andromeda-ascendant:~$ sudo apt-get install mail-notification
[sudo] password for elija: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  evolution evolution-common evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common
  evolution-data-server-online-accounts evolution-plugins fetchyahoo getlive gnome-desktop3-data gnome-user-guide
  gstreamer0.10-tools hwdata libcamel-1.2-49 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libebackend-1.2-7
  libebook-1.2-14 libebook-contacts-1.2-0 libecal-1.2-16 libedata-book-1.2-20 libedata-cal-1.2-23
  libedataserver-1.2-18 liberror-perl libevolution libgail-3-0 libgdata-common libgdata19 libgeocode-glib0
  libgmime-2.6-0 libgnome-desktop-3-10 libgnome-keyring-common libgnome-keyring0 libgnomevfs2-extra libgoa-1.0-0b
  libgoa-1.0-common libgtkhtml-4.0-0 libgtkhtml-4.0-common libgtkhtml-editor-4.0-0 libgtkspell3-3-0 libgweather-3-6
  libgweather-common libio-multiplex-perl libjavascriptcoregtk-3.0-0 libmail-spf-perl libmime-tools-perl
  libnet-cidr-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ip-perl libnet-server-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl liboauth0 libpst4
  libsignon-glib1 libsys-hostname-long-perl libterm-readkey-perl libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 libwebkitgtk-3.0-common libyelp0
  libytnef0 mail-notification-evolution pkg-config postfix procmail re2c sa-compile spamassassin spamc yelp yelp-xsl
Suggested packages:
  evolution-ews evolution-plugins-experimental evolution-data-server-dbg liblog-log4perl-perl postfix-mysql
  postfix-pgsql postfix-ldap postfix-pcre sasl2-bin dovecot-common postfix-cdb postfix-doc razor libdbi-perl pyzor
  libmail-dkim-perl
Recommended packages:
  default-mta mail-transport-agent fetchmail
The following NEW packages will be installed
  evolution evolution-common evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common
  evolution-data-server-online-accounts evolution-plugins fetchyahoo getlive gnome-desktop3-data gnome-user-guide
  gstreamer0.10-tools hwdata libcamel-1.2-49 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libebackend-1.2-7
  libebook-1.2-14 libebook-contacts-1.2-0 libecal-1.2-16 libedata-book-1.2-20 libedata-cal-1.2-23
  libedataserver-1.2-18 liberror-perl libevolution libgail-3-0 libgdata-common libgdata19 libgeocode-glib0
  libgmime-2.6-0 libgnome-desktop-3-10 libgnome-keyring-common libgnome-keyring0 libgnomevfs2-extra libgoa-1.0-0b
  libgoa-1.0-common libgtkhtml-4.0-0 libgtkhtml-4.0-common libgtkhtml-editor-4.0-0 libgtkspell3-3-0 libgweather-3-6
  libgweather-common libio-multiplex-perl libjavascriptcoregtk-3.0-0 libmail-spf-perl libmime-tools-perl
  libnet-cidr-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ip-perl libnet-server-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl liboauth0 libpst4
  libsignon-glib1 libsys-hostname-long-perl libterm-readkey-perl libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 libwebkitgtk-3.0-common libyelp0
  libytnef0 mail-notification mail-notification-evolution pkg-config postfix procmail re2c sa-compile spamassassin
  spamc yelp yelp-xsl
0 to upgrade, 70 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
Need to get 24.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 144 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

I'm not saying that it would break anything but for my taste that's way too much to install just for the possibility of getting email notifications working when they could be fixed in another update. If you go for it, let us know how it works out.

As I said in a post above, makes no sense to experiment with packages unless you really know what you are doing!

Messing about is a great to start figuring that out; and that's why I love VirtualBox

[Qqmike]

elifathegold: I don't think I'll be installing it, look at the dependencies:

Me neither. That's way too much to sort out or back out of if you mess things up! This also is not an urgent issue for me. If/when a Thunderbird updates fixes it, it will be interesting to (try to) see what packages came with the update that might have or probably fixed it.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I have been using kshowmail for some years now. That's working pretty good. It was the only mail notifier I ever got to work.

[Rod J]

I've given up waiting on a fix for this from Mozilla ... I'm pretty sure it's a Thunderbird regression that's caused the email pop-up notification to stop working.

Today I installed a Thunderbird plugin called "Mailbox Alert". It's VERY configurable and works great. It doesn't use the in-built KDE notification system but I guess you can't have everything. Just search for and install it from the Thunderbird add-on manager. Here is the help page which gives an indication of what it can do: http://tjeb.nl/Projects/Mailbox_Alert/Manual/index.html Interestingly, the author of the add-on uses KDE too (see the screenshots on that page).

[Qqmike]

Rod J: I've given up waiting on a fix for this from Mozilla ... I'm pretty sure it's a Thunderbird regression that's caused the email pop-up notification to stop working.

Yep, same here. OTOH, I kind of like it this way now -- I'd rather not be reminded of all the incoming emails from lists I've subscribed to! I check the Inbox only when I'm in the right mood. This is me before: . This is me with my new policy:

[dequire]

Yep, same here. OTOH, I kind of like it this way now -- I'd rather not be reminded of all the incoming emails from lists I've subscribed to! I check the Inbox only when I'm in the right mood. This is me before: . This is me with my new policy:

Just an FYI - in reading the documentation from the add-on's author, it looks like you can only show notifications from the accounts and / or folders desired.....cool!