Thunderbird with date format similar to Gmail

In GMail, today email will show only time received, and email within this year will show only month and day (MMM dd), while previous years will show full date of "dd/MM/yyyy".

We cant replicate the exact behavior, as Thunderbird only allow us to configure by today, this week, and others (default). And personally I prefer "MMM dd yyyy" over "dd/MM/yyyy". So the steps below help you to get the date format that close to GMail, and the reverse of date_long and date_short is to ensure date display when open email is sensible too:

  1. Open Thunderbird Config Editor by going to "⚙" > "General", scroll to the bottom and you shall see button of "Config Editor".
  2. Then in Config Editor, search for each try below, and set as String value if entry not exists yet
intl.date_time.pattern_override.date_long = MMM dd
intl.date_time.pattern_override.date_short = MMM dd yyyy

mail.ui.display.dateformat.today = 0
mail.ui.display.dateformat.thisweek = 1
mail.ui.display.dateformat.default = 2
  1. Restart Thunderbird

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-date-time-formats-thunderbird "Customize Date and Time formats in Thunderbird"

[2] https://kb.mozillazine.org/Date_display_format "Display date format"