A simple solution to standardize time stamps in Thunderbird using the ISO-8601 format by leveraging the Lithuanian locale.

The Problem

Thunderbird’s default time stamp format may not match your preferred ISO-8601 standard. This can be particularly annoying when you want consistent time formatting across your applications.

The Solution

Here’s a shell script that sets the time stamp format in Thunderbird to ISO-8601 by using the Lithuanian locale:

#!/bin/sh
export LC_TIME=lt_LT.utf-8
[ "$LC_ALL" != "$LC_TIME" ] && unset LC_ALL
/usr/bin/thunderbird "$@"

How It Works

  • The script sets the LC_TIME environment variable to the Lithuanian UTF-8 locale
  • This changes the time stamp display format in Thunderbird to ISO-8601
  • The conditional check ensures LC_ALL doesn’t override our locale setting
  • All command-line arguments are passed through to Thunderbird

Usage

  1. Save this script to a file (e.g., thunderbird-iso)
  2. Make it executable: chmod +x thunderbird-iso
  3. Use this script instead of calling Thunderbird directly

This simple approach gives you standardized ISO-8601 time stamps in Thunderbird without requiring any complex configuration changes.