Betterbird: System Requirements

Windows

Operating Systems

• Windows 7 64bit (only in Betterbird 115, support dropped in Betterbird 128)
• Windows 8 64bit
• Windows 10 64bit
• Windows 11 64bit

Windows Recommended Hardware

• Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
• 2GB of RAM, preferably 4 GB
• 300 MB hard drive space (in addition to storage necessary for downloaded messages)

Linux

Linux is a can of worms due to the many distributions, desktop environments, FlatPak or not, X11 vs. Wayland, etc.

The executables we build on a current version of Mint 20.2 (as of August 2021) require GLIBC 2.31 to run. Thunderbird can run on earlier versions of GLIBC. See Distrowatch for a list of distributions and click on the respective distribution link to see the GLIBC version.

Supported versions, for example:
Linux Mint 20
Ubuntu 20
Debian 11 "Bullseye".

Note Betterbird and Debian's/Ubuntu's Thunderbird build use EGL 1.5 graphics API whereas Mozilla-built Thunderbird uses GLX 1.4 which can lead to blurry fonts.

Mac

Due to popular demand, we're providing a Mac build. This is compiled on an Intel Mac under macOS 12 "Monterey". We've also tested it on macOS 10 "Catalina". We had feedback that it also works under macOS 13 "Ventura" both on Intel and M1/2 (ARM) hardware. As of June 2024 we're also providing an experimental cross-compiled ARM64 build. Feedback welcome on what works and what doesn't.