thunderbird
Thunderbird app doesn't find OpenKeychain, even though it's installed and working
Checklist
- [x] I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same bug report.
- [x] I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
App
Thunderbird for Android
App version
11.0b2
Where did you get the app from?
F-Droid
Android version
13
Device model
Samsung Galaxy A51
Steps to reproduce
- Go to Settings in Thunderbird App (just as in K9-Mail, btw.).
- Activate the encryption for the specific mail account that you have a private key for.
- Thunderbird tells you that you need OpenKeychain and asks you to install it - even though it is installed and set up with all the keys needed.
- When following Thunderbird's advice, F-Droid openes and tells me that I have the most recent version of OpenKeychain installed.
Same issue as was reported a couple of weeks earlier and then closed without being solved just due to a lack of traffic on that topic. Since the problem persists for me (I found that other bug report when looking for a solution), I opened this new bug report as the original author was told to do in case it persisted.
Expected behavior
Thunderbird should find + use the installed OpenKeychain app.
Actual behavior
see above.
Logs
No crash logs, since it doesn't crash.
As a consequence, sending messages from the Thunderbird app doesn't work, no matter if I want to encrypt them or not, since it tells me that the connection to the encryption module was not found (or something to that extend, I translated it freely from memory and my language). Very annoying. And saving a written out draft doesn't work either, with the same error message.
Sometimes Android will offload unused apps including OpenKeyChain, but it sounds like you've run it separately? Can you confirm if this is a regression from 10.0, or if this also occurs there?
I can confirm that I started OpenKeychain separately, so it was not in hibernation mode or offloaded. I had the same issue with K9 and therefore switched to Thunderbird, since I figured this is the future... I have not used Thunderbird 10, but installed 11 beta right away.
Ah got it, thank you. Could you provide some logs? I know it doesn't crash, but the logs could give us some debug info. https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/wiki/LoggingErrors
Alright, I just tested writing and sending an e-mail again. I was able to send it unencrypted, which is better than what I experienced the last days. Probably without relevance: I allowed OpenKeychain to run without being put to sleep by the system in the meantime. Still I was not able to tell Thunderbird to connect to OpenKeychain for encryption.
Before creating the log, I performed the above mentioned steps (write + send a message, try to activate encryption).
I encountered the same issue today, the Thunderbird app claimed that no OpenPGP app was installed, even though OpenKeychain was installed and still worked as well. What's weird is that I was able to add three new PGP keys to OpenKeychain and then to Thunderbird about between two and four weeks ago without any issues, whilst the last update of the Thunderbird app for Android on F-Droid was about five weeks ago. Since I update my apps daily, it's pretty weird that Thunderbird worked flawlessly after the last update and suddenly could not connect to OpenKeychain anymore... also, I do not understand why @t-matze and @savas145 encountered the issue many months ago, when I did not have any issues yet. I added two e-mail accounts to Thunderbird in the last month and successfully activated PGP encryption for each of them without any problem.
I also found a small workaround for this, which works for me at least: I simply uninstalled Thunderbird and reinstalled it with the previously exported settings. Then, Thunderbird could successfully find OpenKeychain. But obviously, this does not really resolve this issue and it could happen anytime again. I also wonder why this method actually works for me.