Allow Thunderbird 3 To Display Images Automatically [How-To]

The great thing about Thunderbird 3 is its speed, but you can quickly be slowed down (nice oxymoron eh?) by emails containing images.  Each time you open an email using Thunderbird you will see a Remote Content message stating that there is a security risk in displaying remote content from unknown sites.  The security risk is real. However, if you’re like me and use Gmail or have a good spam filter set up then you probably aren’t receiving any malicious emails to your main inbox.

If you’re sick of seeing a pop-up from Thunderbird saying that it protects your privacy, there is a way around it.  True you can click Always load remote content from [email protected] But that can get annoying if you receive email from a lot of different people – since you have to repeat the process for every single one.

Here is a quick guide for removing those pesky “privacy” pop-ups for remote content, it’s fast but may require a small sense of adventure!

How to Automatically Show All Images In Thunderbird 3

1.   From in Thunderbird version 3, Click Tools and then Select Options

2.   Click the Advanced tab and then Click Config Editor

3.   You’re alerted with a warning about how dangerous it can be to modify your config.  Click the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

4.   From the about:config menu, Find the mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image entry.  The easiest way is to type it into the filter above.  Once found, Double-Click the Entry until it says Status = user set, and Value = false.  Once done you can exit, and changes will happen immediately.

Now whenever you access emails using Thunderbird you should no longer ever be prompted by the “Protect Your Privacy” image blocking caption.  If later you decide that you want the extra security you can always go back in and set the value to “true” in the about:config menu, and everything will go back to default.