Thunderbird AutoOrdered

AutoOrdered is a Thunderbird MailExtension that automatically organizes your disorganized Inbox into a clean, navigable folder hierarchy based on sender domains.

It is designed to tame high-volume email accounts (e.g., old accounts cluttered with newsletters, notifications, and spam) by grouping messages from the same sender into their own folders.

• Your Inbox will be close to empty (only emails that appeared once per origin-domain left)
• You won't lose any emails.
• Everything will be ordered
• For unsubscribing from many mail-subscriptions, you only need to unsubscribe once per folder and can CTRL+A delete them all

How it Helps Clean Up Clutter

If you have thousands of unorganized emails:

1. Run AutoOrdered: It moves messages into Inbox/autoordered/<Letter>/<Domain>/<Subdomain>.
2. Review Groups: navigate to a folder (e.g., Inbox/autoordered/a/amazon.com).
3. Take Action:
   • Unsubscribe: Open one recent email in that folder and use the "Unsubscribe" link.
   • Bulk Delete: Since all emails from that sender are now in one isolated folder, you can right-click the folder and select Delete to remove thousands of emails at once, without affecting other important mail.

Example:

Features

• Hierarchical Sorting: amazon.com goes to a/amazon.com, billing.amazon.com goes to a/amazon.com/billing.
• Idempotent: Safe to run multiple times. It only moves messages if more than 1 message from a sender exists.
• Batch Processing: Moves messages in chunks to avoid freezing Thunderbird or hitting IMAP limits.
• Safe: Only touches the Inbox. Does not delete messages automatically.

Installation

Option A (development, temporary):

1. Download the latest release (or code).
2. Open Thunderbird.
3. Go to Add-ons and Themes.
4. Click the Gear icon > Debug Add-ons.
5. Click Load Temporary Add-on... and select the manifest.json file from this project.
   • Note: For permanent installation, zip the files and install as a standard extension.

Option B (regular user, permanent):

1. Zip all the files in this folder (ensure manifest.json is at the root of the zip).
2. Rename the .zip file to .xpi (e.g., tb-autoordered.xpi).
3. Open Thunderbird and go to Add-ons and Themes.
4. Click the Gear icon -> Install Add-on From File....
5. Select your .xpi file.

Usage

1. Go to 'Addons and Themes', press the gearwheel in the top/center use Debug Addons

2. After installation there should pop up the "Sort Inbox"-Button with a green AO-Symbol in the top right corner of thunderbird as seen below.

   

   If it doesn't, just customize your toolbar:

   • Right-click the main toolbar > Customize...
   • Drag the Sort Inbox button (Green "AO" Icon) to your toolbar.
   • Click Save.

3. Click the Sort Inbox button.

4. Open the Error Console (Ctrl+Shift+J) to see progress logs (AutoOrdered: Moving...).

5. Check your Inbox for a new autoordered folder.

Permissions

• accountsRead: To find your Inbox.
• messagesRead & messagesMove: To organize your emails.
• accountsFolders: Required to create the necessary subfolders.

Thunderbird Version

Tested with Thunderbird v147.0

Issues

Top Level Domain suffixes like '.co.uk' are recognized as domains, if that disturbs you - feel free to participate and fix it with a pullrequest.

License

MIT License