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Hide Thunderbird's buttons in message headers area

Arne Hartherz
March 23, 2011Software engineer at makandra GmbH

I don't like those buttons inside the header area of a message that Thunderbird 3 put there. Though the CompactHeader addon is often claimed to be a solution it does way too much for me -- I like the headers the way they are, just not the buttons.

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This is a bit of a hack but works very well for me (keeps the date and "other actions" menu on the right, see the screenshot below):

  1. Open up your profile directory (~/.thunderbird/<profile_name>/)
  2. Create a chrome directory inside it.
  3. Put the attached userChrome.css file into the chrome directory.
  4. Restart Thunderbird

If it does not work for you check that you are in the correct profile folder; case is important, too (chrome instead of Chrome).


When on Windows, keep those things in mind:

  • The profile folder is %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile_name>
  • You may want to modify the userChrome.css so uses 4px for top padding which looks nicer for a Windows Thunderbird.

Posted by Arne Hartherz to makandra dev (2011-03-23 10:45)