Mozilla Thunderbird is the most popular email client software that works on so many platforms including Windows. Personally, I launch it the first thing in the morning as soon as I am in front of my Windows PC to check all the messages that I have received in so many of my email accounts. But for this I have to manually launch Thunderbird every time I want to check the email messages. Even though it keeps running and stays in the system tray once it has been launched, you still have to launch it the first time.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it ran automatically at Windows startup? Well it can setup to auto-start in Windows 10 very easily. Here is how:
- Find the Thunderbird shortcut on the Windows Desktop. Right-click on this Thunderbird shortcut and select Copy from the context-menu.
- Press key combination Win+R to open the Run dialog.
- In the Run dialog, type shell:startup and press Enter. This will open the auto-start folder for the current Windows user.
- Right-click in the middle of the startup folder and then choose Paste shortcut from the context-menu.
- This is it, now Thunderbird will launch as soon as you start Windows PC.
Unfortunately, there are no command line options to minimize Thunderbird when it is launched. There are no official option to start it minimized without the help of third party applications. If you use the above instructions then Thunderbird will be launched in the maximized window state and you will be able to check your email messages the usual way. Later you can choose to minimize it to the system tray so that it keep checking for newer email messages in the background. The new version of Thunderbird has an option which when enabled sends Thunderbird to the system tray when it is minimized.