Email, Messaging, & Video Calls > Email How to Change the Default Browser in Thunderbird Choose the browser Thunderbird uses to open links in emails By Dave Rankin Dave Rankin Writer Dave Rankin is a former Lifewire writer and a senior software developer who co-owns a digital creative agency and creates and distributes open source software. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on February 24, 2021 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Email Yahoo! Mail Gmail What to Know Go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor. Enter network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http in the search field.Set values to True for network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http and network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https.Go to Preferences > Attachments. In the Content Type column, go to http and https and select the preferred web browser. This article explains how to change the default browser Thunderbird uses to open URLs. These instructions apply to Thunderbird 11.0.1 through 17.0.8. Results in other versions may vary. Set the Default Browser in Thunderbird Among the open-source desktop-based email client choices, Mozilla Thunderbird is one of the most popular, but Thunderbird doesn't operate alone. When you click web links in your email, Thunderbird usually passes the event off to your default web browser. Under normal circumstances, this all goes off without a hitch. However, if things go wrong, you need to know how to tell Thunderbird precisely which web browser you want it to use. Open Thunderbird. Go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. In the Preferences window, select the Advanced tab. In the lower-right corner of the window, select Config Editor. Another window will open, warning you that you can potentially break Thunderbird in the Config Editor. Select I accept the risk to move forward. Use the search at the top of the Config Editor window to look for network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http. Double-click network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http and network.protocol-handler.warn-external.https to set their value to True. Close the Config Editor. In the Preferences window, select the Attachments tab. Go to the Content Type column and look for http (http). Select the value in the Action column in the same row to see a list of choices that includes the web browsers currently installed on your computer. Choose the new action you'd like Thunderbird to take when it encounters a URL that starts with http. Do the same for https (https) in the Content Type column. This will cover every time Thunderbird opens a URL that begins with https. Press Close to exit the Preferences window. Restart Thunderbird. If everything worked, Thunderbird will send clicks on URLs to whatever browser you selected. This technique does not change your default web browser across all of your applications. This setting affects Thunderbird only. Pro Tip By following the steps above, you can set Thunderbird to use a web browser other than the default one the rest of your computer's applications use. This could be handy if you're concerned about viruses coming in through emails, and you only want to view these web pages in a high-security web browser. And, you can handle HTTP-based URLs with one browser and https-based ones with another. Again, this could be something to consider for both security and privacy issues. While you may trust your https (encrypted) requests to any of your installed web browsers, you may want your HTTP (non-encrypted) requests handled by a different browser. On Linux, this change should work on your particular distribution with your particular desktop environment. If you want to create symbolic links to your web browser under an alias, edit /etc/alternatives/, or dive into the Thunderbird Config Editor, the following suggestion is just as likely to work and will save time. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up! Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit