Settings

The Settings window is where you configure TabMail to work the way you want.

Opening Settings

Click the TabMail icon in Thunderbird’s toolbar, then select Settings.

Rerun the Welcome Wizard

Right at the top of Settings you’ll find a Rerun Welcome Wizard button. Use it any time you want to revisit the onboarding walkthrough, see recommended defaults, or get a quick refresher on features.

Plan & usage

Below the header you’ll see your current plan and a usage meter showing how much of your monthly quota you’ve used. Click Refresh to update the meter at any time.

Appearance

Customize how TabMail looks and feels:

  • Theme — Choose Light, Dark, or Follow System to match your OS preference.
  • Font sizes — Adjust the size of UI elements, email body text, and code blocks independently.
  • Keyboard hints — Toggle the banner that shows shortcuts (Tab, Shift-Tab, ⌘K) when composing.
  • Tag by thread — When enabled, all messages in a thread share the highest-priority action tag so the entire conversation shows a single triage indicator.

Reminders

Control how many reminders appear when you open the chat window. The default is 3, but you can set any value from 1 to 5. For more details on how reminders work—and how to hide or re-enable individual reminders—see Reminders.

Inbox

TabMail works best with a focused inbox. If your mailbox has grown large, click Archive Old Emails to move older messages out of your inbox in one action. You choose the threshold (e.g., emails older than 2 weeks), and TabMail handles the rest.

This is especially useful when you first install TabMail and want a clean starting point. For more on why a smaller inbox matters, see Large inbox behavior.

Contacts & calendar defaults

Select which address book and calendar TabMail should use by default when creating new contacts or events. You can always override these on a per-action basis.

Full-text search

TabMail indexes your emails locally so the chat agent can search them instantly. This section lets you:

  • View the current index status and native helper version.
  • Run a Maintenance Scan to catch any missing or stale entries.
  • Trigger a Full Reindex if you ever need to rebuild the index from scratch.
  • Schedule a Weekly maintenance scan during a time window you choose.
  • Review Maintenance History to see past runs.

UI tweaks

TabMail can apply a set of recommended Thunderbird UI tweaks with a single click—or you can pick individual tweaks:

  • Hide the Spaces toolbar
  • Set Compact density
  • Use system fonts
  • Disable monospace in plain-text messages
  • Adjust font sizes to TabMail’s defaults
  • Switch to Vertical layout
  • Enable 3-row Card View (shows email snippets)

These tweaks overwrite some Thunderbird preferences, so skip them if you’ve already customized your UI.

Privacy

If you prefer not to use any AI features, enable Opt out from sending ANY email data to TabMail AI backend. This disables chat, summaries, autocomplete, and all other AI calls. The rest of the TabMail UI will continue to work.

Last updated: March 30, 2026