[Tip] How to Move Menu Bar at Top in Mozilla Thunderbird
This article will help you in restoring the Menu bar at the top and above the new unified toolbar in Mozilla Thunderbird window.
Newer versions of Mozilla Thunderbird such as 115.0 and later come with a redesigned UI called “Supernova UI“. The new UI features new icons, theme, unified toolbar to provide modern and clean look-n-feel to Thunderbird.
Many users use classic Menubar in Thunderbird to access various options such as new, open, cut, copy, paste, customize view settings, etc. You can press ALT key on your keyboard to temporarily show the Menu bar. To permanently display the Menu bar, you can right-click on the top toolbar or titlebar and select “Menu Bar” option from the context menu. It’ll pin the Menu bar below the toolbar.
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In older versions of Thunderbird, the Menu bar used to display at the top of the window. Now many Thunderbird users are annoyed by the new position of the Menu bar. They want to move the Menu bar back to the top and above the unified toolbar similar to previous versions.
By default, Mozilla team has not provided any option to change the location of Menu bar but we have a secret CSS code which can restore the Menu bar at the top in Thunderbird.
Following image shows the default Menu bar position below the toolbar and tweaked Menu bar position at the top in Thunderbird:
If you also want to move the Menu bar at the top of Thunderbird window, following steps will help you:
Table of Contents
STEP 1: Enable CSS Stylesheet Code Support in Thunderbird
We need to use a CSS style code to restore the Menu bar at top in Thunderbird, so we’ll need to first enable support for CSS code in Thunderbird by modifying a preference/flag using about:config page.
Following steps will help you in enabling CSS style code support in Thunderbird:
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1. Open Thunderbird and click on the Main Menu (3 horizontal lines) icon present at the right-side of the titlebar. Now select Settings option. You can also open Settings page directly by clicking on the cog wheel icon present at the bottom of the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can press ALT key to temporary show Menu bar and then select “Tools -> Settings” option.
2. It’ll open Thunderbird Options window. Scroll down to bottom and click on the “Config Editor” button given at the bottom of the window.
It’ll open the hidden secret “about:config” page of Thunderbird which is similar to Mozilla Firefox‘s advanced configuration editor page.
3. Now type stylesheets in Search filter box and look for following preference in the window:
toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
4. This preference is set to false by default which means the support for CSS code is currently disabled in Thunderbird. To enable support for CSS code, double-click on toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets preference and set it to true. Alternatively, you can right-click on the preference and select Toggle option.
Close the config editor page.
STEP 2: Open Thunderbird Profile Folder
Now we’ll need to put the required CSS code in a file called userChrome.css present inside Thunderbird profile folder.
You can directly open your Thunderbird profile folder using following steps:
- Click on Main Thunderbird Menu (3-lines) icon and select Help -> Troubleshooting Information option.
- Now look for “Profile Folder” option on information page and click on “Open Folder” button.
It’ll open your current Thunderbird profile folder.
Now create a new folder with the name chrome inside the profile folder. Right-click on empty area and select New-> Folder option. Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+N keys together to directly create a new folder.
Set the new folder name as chrome and press Enter key.
PS: Some users may already have chrome folder in their profile folder.
STEP 3: Put CSS Code in userChrome.css File
Now we’ll apply the required CSS code. We’ll take help of a built-in file userChrome.css to implement our custom-made CSS code. This file doesn’t exist by default and we’ll need to manually create the file using Notepad and add following code:
#toolbar-menubar{order:-1 !important;}
When you save the file in Notepad, set “Save as type” option to “All files (*.*)” in the Save dialog box and set the file name as userChrome.css and click on Save button.
Make sure to put the userChrome.css file inside Chrome folder which we created in STEP 2.
PS: If you already have userChrome.css file in chrome folder, you’ll need to copy the above text and paste it at the top of existing userChrome.css file and save the file.
STEP 4: Restart Thunderbird to Apply Changes
At last, you’ll need to restart Thunderbird to apply changes. Restart Thunderbird and now you’ll see the good old Menu bar restored or moved at the top of window.
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Thank you VG. The fix worked great for me.
I totally agree with Lynne Strojny. The new font format is much harder to read. I wish people would quit moving things around and making unnecessary changes. It just causes frustration and lost man hours. Random change is almost always counter productive.
Thanks !
The method worked for me , I have now got the the menu bar back on top of the tool bar like it should be in the classic TB view.
I have just upgraded to TB 115.3.1 and the other thing that is really bugging me is when checking for new email messages.
I have 2 email accounts and one newsgroup account and previously I could use the Get Messages icon on the tool bar to check for new messages on the individual accounts , but NOW , the Get Messages function only applies to the newsgroup account and not for the email accounts.
To check for new emails on my email accounts , I now need to go to File -> Get New Messages For and then select the individual account instead of just going to the Get Messages icon on the tool bar.
Does anybody have a trick to put the Get New Messages function into a toolbar icon or a simpler way of accessing the Get New Messages function like it was in previous TB versions.
Thanks.
Thanks for the help!
I get really aggravated when programmers think it is okay to change things to what they want. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! If others want a change tell them how to do it without making an arbitrary change for every other user!
What can i say – i love this trick. Wish the creator of thunderbird had provided it as an option; i really don’t like the new design and it is one of the reasons I won’t donate this year to them. There is desire to make things better by adding the kitchen sink but sometimes adding the kitchen sink make things worse and over the years thunderbird has gotten more features and has become less enjoyable to use.
That worked perfectly—thanks! I agree with prior posters that forcing new layouts on users is really annoying, especially when these layouts conflict with the standard layout used by every other program.
This is amazing – thanks sooooo much!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. This worked a charm and the instructions were perfect. I too would like to see the density issue resolved if you ever can figure it out. It’s either too stretched or too compact.
Can’t thank you enough, They just changed this stuff and didn’t leave a way for us to keep it the way it was. Change for the sake of change is killing software : (
Thank you. Mozilla seems to have forgotten the importance of standards. The one in question is “IBM’s Common User Access (CUA) is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture. It’s why virtually every app has a menubar at the top that is accessed with F10 and has alt-accelerator keys. Virtually everyone adheres to this standard and users are eternally grateful, even if they don’t realize it. Mac does it, MS does it, Linux does it, etc., etc.
Glad there is this fix but mozilla should not have violated the standard in the first place.
Great. Any ideas how to change quick filter button into “filter these messages” box instead? It is annoying that this field is on the next line not on place of button
Thank you! Can’t even explain how badly this was tripping me up. I was questioning my sanity – did something change? Found this post and back to comfortable. Comment above re:standards is interesting, I didn’t know this but makes sense why this kind change was so hard on me. To other comment above having issues make sure userChrome.css is named correctly (case sensitive “C” in Linux usually matters), then restart T-bird.
Thanks!!!! Worked like a hose!
Annoyed was NOT the word I used!
Honestly can’t thank you enough because this was driving me within minutes of upgrading to Supernova.
I love Thunderbird but what were they thinking to make the Unified Toolbar sit above the Menu bar when the latter sits at the top of every other single app that I use?! Sometimes convention has its merits, folks.
The fix worked exactly as you said it would. Thank you for saving my sanity!!
thanks for the tip! it worked!
I’ll never understand why developers don’t let to modify such a thing by a simply flag or option
Thank you! Worked like a charm. We have to do this stuff manually, but I’m glad there’s a way to get it done.
Thanks! I had found similar instructions, however, they used the about:config and chrome/userChrome.css for firefox, not thunderbird. Once I used thunderbird’s about:config and the userChrome.css in .thunderbird/, it worked like a charm.
Thank you for posting this. Nothing like having software you use every day completely change the look of the interface without warning or choice. I appreciate at least being able to at least fix this one annoyance, much appreciated.
Never did get it to work for me, despite any number of reboots, restart app, etc. I’m now permanently back to 102.15.1, and don’t plan to update TBird ever again. I suspect that eventually I’ll get so out of date that I’ll have to find a new mail client. Thanks for nothing, Mozilla crew. I agree with others that it’s unconscionable for them to violate CUA, as well as becoming incompatible with all other desktop apps. And agree with a previous poster that I would love to see an explanation of their thinking.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Do you know how to get rid of the window minimize/maximize/close buttons and reintroduce normal (OS/window manager) window frame?
Worked great on TB 115.4.1 (64 bit).
Just hope TB doesn’t disable it in a future release.
Thanks, it works perfectly on linux with thunderbird version 115.3.1.
@Andrew: Are you looking for Settings → General → Hide system window titlebar?
Another thanks from a long time TB user… Why are these programmers making such drastic changes to a long standing UI without at least putting a switch in the settings menu to allow legacy layouts etc.? Mind boggling.
Thanks man. Now it’s back to normal.
THANK YOU!!!
I had “upgraded” to v115 and have spent hours attempting to revert to the older version (the new UI made my face hurt)…
Now with this and some customization of the toolbar I’ll be able to live with this new version of TB.
Please don’t change things that works on updates. Especially UX should remain. Change only after request or confirmation.
I don’t like the new layout and do not want to fiddle with settings to get things back.
Brilliant! It worked, thank you.
Another request: The message header takes up a lot of screen real-estate. Reducing the header font sizes and padding independently, would help here. Ironically this doesn’t change with the density controls.
Thank you very much. It worked and I feel much better now
Too bad we had to jump thru hoops to get this back like it should have been. The menu bar always goes just below the title bar. Period. Almost every program in a GUI does it that way. To change it just shows the programmers do not care for the user’s productivity. There is something wrong with programmers who think that change is always a good idea. The ability to think things thru has all but been lost.
Great solution to a very annoying GUI change.
More important: it should be back as a standard setting in the config menu.
Personally I don’t understand why some GUI designers force us to read upside down.. MS does the same with their toolbar in MS-Office (the group text showing _below_ the icons/menu entries). It just doesn’t make sense, don’t these designer ever read a normal text ???
Thanks, it still works 🙂