February 12, 2026
Calendars & Chaos
Trying Out Thunderbird Appointment While I Patiently Wait for an Invite
Waiting Room Drama: fans cheer while tinkerers wrestle Thunderbird’s new scheduler
TLDR: Thunderbird’s Appointment tool is coming, and a local test shows promise despite tricky setup and login quirks. The crowd is hyped for open‑source scheduling but split between paying for the service later or DIY’ing now, with jokes about RPG scheduling being the real final boss
Thunderbird’s upcoming Appointment tool—think “send friends a link to pick a time without 37 back‑and‑forth messages”—is finally peeking out, and the community is buzzing. The author tried running the open beta code locally (using the separate Accounts project) and discovered the setup is a mini‑adventure: port conflicts, a missing command, and a login mystery that ends by flipping a “first‑time register” switch. One commenter cheered, “we finally have FOSS calendar progress!”—FOSS meaning free, open‑source software. Others joked the real boss fight wasn’t the tabletop RPG, it was Docker vs Dice.
The mood? Split. On one side, open‑source fans are thrilled to see Thunderbird build a scheduling tool that could replace polls and manual calendar juggling, with some admiring the Stalwart tech under the hood. On the other, a familiar tension simmers: a paid Thunderbird mail service bundling Appointment versus the community’s do‑it‑yourself ethic. Hot takes popped up like “why self‑host now—just wait for the invite,” while tinkerers flexed: “I’ll make it work, even if I have to rename every port.” Memes referenced calendar boss fights, “waiting list purgatory,” and create_client-gate (the command that went poof). In short: hopeful hype with a side of setup soap opera—classic open‑source drama
Key Points
- •Thunderbird Appointment is part of a forthcoming paid Thunderbird mail service announced in April last year.
- •Appointment depends on Thunderbird Accounts; local setup needs uv, dnsmasq host overrides for keycloak and stalwart, and Docker enabled.
- •A bootstrap script failed during Accounts setup; the author worked around it by manually creating a missing mail/etc directory and opened an issue.
- •The documented create_client command was removed; the step can be skipped, and port conflicts (postgres, frontend, mailpit) must be resolved and .env updated.
- •Default admin credentials from Thunderbird Accounts do not allow login to Appointment; for local testing, setting APP_ALLOW_FIRST_TIME_REGISTER=True enables first-time registration without Stalwart.