Stop Thunderbird from littering your desktop with attachments
I love Thunderbird. It is both flexible, powerful and user-friendly. But, on Mac OS X, it has the nasty habit of saving a copy of all the opened attachments on the desktop leaving a messy trail… Can something be done about that ? You bet !
I said Thunderbird was flexible, didn’t I ? It is so flexible that it will let you edit tons of hidden parameters if you so wish. Those parameters can be found in the “Thunderbird” menu under the “Preferences” item. In the preferences window go to “Advanced”, then “General” and then “Configuration editor”. Be sure to read the warning that will appear and don’t do anything stupid…
Now for the grand finale, in the about:config window that appeared, control-click (or right-click) anywhere and select “New” and “Boolean value” from the contextual menu that appeared. Then, paste in the following key name browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit and select true when prompted. Voilà! Now, all those temporary files will be cleaned up when you exit Thunderbird.
This has been tested to work in Thunderbird 3 (but I believe it also works in Thunderbird 2).
Update : As pointed out by Loes in the comments below, it is also possible to have Thunderbird save the temporary files to another less intrusive location. Check out the original post titled Thunderbird 3 Litters Desktop on OS X for more information.
Found it (thanks to someone else on a forum):
http://www.green-light.ca/2010/02/thunderbird-3-litters-desktop-on-os-x/
Thanks for the link Loes. I updated my post to include this link since it will probably help most people coming to this page.
This is definitely the nerdiest thing I have done on my computer. Having just read The Millenium trilogy I felt all ‘WASP-ish’ too. Thanks!
Watch out! The next you know you’ll be hacking Linux boxes using ssh and getting root. That’s a dangerous path…
This has been bugging me for a while, thanks for the tip.
Genius……………….That was so easy!!!!!
I have been bugged by this for ages, and ages…….
Thanks for this tip – worked a treat. This is something that’s been driving me up the wall since I started using Thunderbird so it’s good to get it sorted at last.
Halleluliah! Thanks for curing me of this bothersome rash
My pleasure, my friend. My pleasure…
Thank you VERY much!
Thanks for the tip. You wonder though, why does Thunderbird do this in the first place, and why doesn’t Thunderbird allow a direct setting for this?
A preference setting would be nice. They could also put the files somewhere a little less intrusive than the desktop…
Loving you right now! Thank you! My desktop junk folder can now be retired!