Thunderbird Profiles Redux

I am fortunate that much of my job is performed remotely. I use my office desktop and a virtual machine (VM) to provide that access. While the VM nicely segregates personal and work environments, I do not use Thunderbird directly inside the VM to monitor related emails.

After splitting my Thunderbird configuration into personal and work profiles, I wanted the work profile to always launch in my second desktop work space. I use my second work space for job related tasks.

I long have used devilspie to control how certain apps launch. Including my work related VM, I launch all VMs in the second desktop work space. Configuring devilspie to launch my work related Thunderbird profile into the second work space proved a bit beyond my immediate grasp.

With some help online, I finally resolved the problem.

I had already created ~/.local/share/applications/mozilla-thunderbird-work.desktop that include the following entry:

Exec=thunderbird -P work

I modified that entry:

Exec=thunderbird -P work --class ThunderbirdWork

I created a new devilspie configuration ~/.devilspie/thunderbird.ds:

    ; generated_rule Thunderbird
    ( if 
      ( begin 
        ( is ( window_class ) "ThunderbirdWork" )
      ) 
      ( begin
        ( set_workspace 2 )
      )
    )

Now my Thunderbird personal profile opens in the first work space and the work profile opens in the second work space.

Posted: October 26, 2019 Category: Usability Tagged: Thunderbird

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