Does Mozilla Thunderbird support push notifications?

Question

I prefer push notifications, and having recently downloaded Thunderbird, I went to the server settings after adding a Gmail account. However, I can't find any option that seems to enable push notifications, only polling rates.

So I have three questions:

1. Does Mozilla Thunderbird support push notifications, with or without an addon?

2. If it supports this without addons: Under Account Settings > [account] > Server Settings > Server Settings, it gives the option, "Allow immediate server notifications when new messages arrive". Is this the option to enable push notifications, or is this something else entirely?

3. If it supports this without addons, If the answer to #2 is "No": How does one enable this function?

Answer 1

Yes it does (source):

"Push e-mail" means that when a message is delivered to the mailbox you want to get immediately notified of it. Thunderbird provides that if your IMAP server supports the optional IDLE command. The IDLE command eliminates the need for a e-mail client to poll for new mail - the mail server automatically notifies the e-mail client whenever there is new mail.

It's the setting you mentioned in p2. It used to be called (and located) differently, but was renamed to be more 'understandable' to non technical users (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449021). I'm not sure they succeeded in that, though... it seems they made it vague for everyone instead :-)

Answer 2

I think this is an important question. I'd like to know the answer - or rather, given that three questions are asked, the answers. Still, I think that the answers are:

1. yes (in that many e-mails seem to arrive almost instantaneously, even when the 'check for new messages' setting is >= 10 minutes);
2. I think so, yes;
3. not applicable.