I recently switched from Linux Mint back to the old trusty Ubuntu (11.10)

One major problem was Unity, but I got round this by installing Xfce and use that as a shell instead. Much better.

Now, my Thunderbird is proper maximised. Like full screen, so I can’t switch to any applications unless I use ALT TAB. Found help on the net.

1) Close Thunderbird

2) Locate your localstore.rdf file, mine was in:

~/.thunderbird/ftfxbq7f.default$

3) Edit the file, and find the section that looks a little like this:

<RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul#messengerWindow"
                   width="1024"
                   height="1024"
                   screenX="344"
                   screenY="113"
                   sizemode="fullscreen" />

And change it to:

<rdf:Description RDF:about="chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul#messengerWindow"
                   width="800"
                   height="600"
                   sizemode="normal"
                   screenX="5"
                   screenY="5" />

Then, once restarted, Thunderbird should be all nice and accessible again. Thanks to Greg for this one!

By admin

7 thought on “Ubuntu, Thunderbird always maximised”
  1. Hi!
    Thanks for the solution, but i had to change both
    <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul#messengerWindow" and
    <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://messenger/content/messengercompose/messengercompose.xul#msgcomposeWindow"
    for being able to launch thunderbird normally.

  2. Worked for me Ubuntu 14.04 I have had this problem for about a year and had a go at fixing it every month or so. I cant believe that it took so long to find this solution.
    Many Thanks

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