Space Control

About

Thunderbird's spaces toolbar assumes you want all of it. If you only use it for mail, Calendar, Tasks and Chat still occupy the rail, the menus, the keyboard shortcuts and the invitation bar. Space Control lets you switch each one off — Mail and Settings always stay — and switching one off removes it everywhere, not just from the toolbar.

WebExtension APIs can't touch the main window, so the add-on ships a small chrome-privileged Experiment API: one generated user stylesheet, Thunderbird's own hidden attribute so keyboard focus never lands on an invisible button, the real mail.chat.enabled pref for chat, and a tabmail monitor that closes tabs of switched-off spaces as they open — which is what makes session restore behave.

Highlights

• Pick what you keep — Address Book, Calendar, Tasks and Chat each switch off independently; Mail and Settings always stay
• Hidden everywhere — toolbar, pinned-spaces menu, menu entries, toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts, not just the rail
• Survives session restore — a tab monitor closes tabs of switched-off spaces as they come back
• Uses Thunderbird's own mechanisms — the same hidden attribute and hide-when-calendar-deactivated marker the app uses itself
• Fully reversible — disabling or uninstalling restores everything, including the two prefs it sets
• Verified on both ends of the range — Betterbird 140 ESR and Thunderbird 153, with all 45 element references checked against omni.ja

# Install the .xpi from Releases, then in Thunderbird:
# Add-ons and Themes → gear menu → Install Add-on From File

# Or build it yourself:
git clone https://github.com/davidboulay/thunderbird-space-control.git
cd thunderbird-space-control && ./build.sh