Ghostbird: GhostText for Thunderbird 🪺📫👻

A GhostText implementation for the Thunderbird email client.

Ghostbird is a Thunderbird add-on that lets you compose your emails in your favorite text editor - Vim, Neovim, VS Code, Sublime Text, Emacs, or any other editor - with a GhostText add-on installed.

Please visit the website for the original browser add-on, GhostText by Federico Brigante, to get the idea.

Since synchronization uses the GhostText protocol, your text editor needs to have a GhostText server function. This means you need to install a plugin on your text editor's side to listen for connections from Thunderbird.

Requirements

• Thunderbird 140 (We will mainly support the latest ESR)

• A text editor that has a GhostText server add-on installed and running:

  $ANY_EDITOR

  The last two implementations can wrap any editor that blocks while editing.

Installation

• See the help page in the Mozilla Support Center for details.

You can install Ghostbird in several ways:

Install within Thunderbird (Recommended)

1. In Thunderbird, open Add-ons Manager.
2. Search for "Ghostbird".
3. Click the + Add to Thunderbird button.

Download and install manually

1. Download the latest release from the Thunderbird add-on website or Github Releases.
2. In Thunderbird, go to Add-ons Manager.
3. Drag and drop the downloaded .xpi file into the Add-ons Manager window.

Alternatively, you can:

3. Press ⚙️ button at the top-right.
4. Select Install Add-on From File... from the menu.
5. Select downloaded .xpi file.

Build from source

• Basically, running make will do, which is roughly equivalent to yarn install && yarn build.
• See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.

Usage

1. Launch your favorite text editor.
2. Start the GhostText server in your text editor (e.g., with :GhostTextStart in Vim).
3. Press the gray Ghostbird button in the Thunderbird mail compose window. (The default shortcut is ^Ctrl+⇧Shift+H)
   • If the connection is successful, the button will turn blue .
   • If the connection fails, the button will turn red . Make sure that the GhostText server is listening. See Troubleshooting page of original GhostText.
4. Write your email in the text editor.
5. Close your text editor to stop Ghostbird.

• Example using Vim-Ghost

  vimghost.webm

• Example using Notepad++ via GhostText-Any

  

How it works

• See design.md for details.

flowchart LR
subgraph Thunderbird
    mailCompose@{label: Compose<br>Window}
    gtClient@{label: Ghostbird}
end

subgraph Your favorite text editor
    gtServer@{label: GhostText<br>Server}
    textEditor@{label: Text editor<br>screen}
end

mailCompose -->|Starts| gtClient
gtClient -->|Connects to| gtServer
gtServer -->|Shows Initial Text| textEditor
textEditor -->|Returns Edited Text| gtServer
gtServer -->|Updates| gtClient
gtClient -->|Updates| mailCompose

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Roadmap

See also a list of milestones.

Changelog & Milestones

Legend

Mark	Meaning	Description
✅	Done	Released in previous versions
🪺	Experimental	Released recently; please try and tell us if you notice something
🚧	WIP	In development but not released
⬜	Planned	Must be implemented to release the version
⛔	Limitation	The version will be released with this limitation

Alpha

• v0.0.1 - Released

  • ✅ Prepare the project skeleton (README, build, test, lint, debug, CI)
  • ✅ Start button on the toolbar
  • ✅ Edit plain text emails
  • ✅ Keyboard shortcuts
  • ✅ Milestones and Project board
  • ⛔ Non-bidirectional: Thunderbird becomes read-only while Ghostbird is active
  • ⛔ No i18n: the UI is only in English*
  • ⛔ Quirky when editing HTML emails

*GhostText communicates only in UTF-8, so you can safely write emails in any language.

• v0.1.0 - Released

  • ✅ Debug

• v0.2.0 - Released

  • ✅ Basic option (at minimum, the port of the GhostText server)
  • ✅ Prepare for i18n (Make texts translatable)

Beta

• v0.2.1 - Released

  • ✅ Fix empty host field being sent to the server

• v0.3.0 - Released

  • 🪺 Show notifications
  • 🪺 Continue i18n (Add more languages)

• v0.4.0 - Current

  • 🪺 Add a way to disconnect using only a mouse

• v0.5.0 - 2025 Q4

  • 🪺 Website with some screenshots
  • 🚧 Edit a HTML email as if it were a plain text email

• v0.x.x - 2025 Q4

  • ⬜ Workaround for the problem where the email text is cleared when VSCod(e|ium) closes or saves the tab

Stable

• v1.0.0 - 2026 Q2

  • ⬜ Mark as stable on AMO (functionally identical to the last beta)

• v1.x.x - 2026 Q4

  • ⬜ Edit Address and Subject fields
  • ⬜ Support text editors that lack a GhostText add-on (e.g., Notepad)*

*Requires protocol extension and server-side support. I intend to develop one by forking GhostText-Any.

Future

• v2.x.x

  • Proper implementation as a GhostText client

    • ⬜ Cursor and selection synchronization
    • ⬜ Bidirectional editing; changes in Thunderbird are reflected in the text editor

  • ⬜ Better handling of conflicts, disconnection, and reconnection (possibly extending the protocol)

  • ⬜ Automate AMO release on GitHub Action

Non-goals

• Editing text boxes other than the email compose window in Thunderbird
• WYSIWYG editing for HTML emails
• Thunderbird Mobile support

Contributing

If you like the idea, please:

• Star the repo.
• Rate the add-on.
• Feel free to open issues and submit pull requests. See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.
• See our milestones page or issues for tasks you can contribute to, and use the Discussions page for general discussions.

Help wanted

We need help with:

• Website and materials (please post screenshots to the wiki)
• Translations (check locales.toml and let us know of any issues)
• Testing with various text editors
• Testing with various OSes
• Wiki pages for user guides and troubleshooting
• Developing the server counterpart so that this can be used as a replacement for External Editor (GhostText-Any or Helix-Ghost can be a good starting point)
• Creating a checklist for testing and debugging (This page can be a good starting point)
• Automating tests with the actual Thunderbird (See Testing)
• Organization members (we want to increase the organization's bus factor)

FAQ

Is it safe to use?

• I'd say yes, but save your work frequently since it may contain bugs and eat your email.
• This add-on does not collect any personal data and can only connect to localhost. Attempts to send any data to external servers are blocked by Thunderbird's security model.
• You can look inside the released .xpi files (which are just zip files) to verify that they match the build from the source code.
• As for trustworthiness, the safest option is to wait until it reaches 1.0.0, as that indicates it has passed Mozilla's manual review.

Why not just fork the original GhostText add-on, or contribute to it?

• See faq.md.

How do I set up a development environment?

• See CONTRIBUTING.md for details on the development workflow.

How do I troubleshoot connection issues?

• Make sure that the GhostText server is listening. See the Troubleshooting page of original GhostText.

How do I switch between HTML mode and Plain Text mode?

• See doc/faq.md.

How can I support the project?

Please consider the following options:

• Star the repo
• Rate the add-on
• Donate to Thunderbird (It's financially separate from Firefox)
• Donate to @fregante, the author of the original GhostText
• Contribute to the development

If you've looked at the options above and still want to motivate the maintainer @snipsnipsnip specifically, you can tip some ETH.

Credits

• Federico Brigante, the author of GhostText.
• Alexandre Feblot, the original author of External Editor, which I took over maintaining; it is now in a stale state. I intend to incorporate some of its features into Ghostbird.
• The button image is based on a photo of a Grey-headed Bushshrike by Patty McGann (CC-BY-2.0).

Tools

Services

License

Ghostbird is dual-licensed under (MPL-2.0 OR GPL-3.0-or-later). See also NOTICE.