Customizing Thunderbird using policies.json

How to setup Thunderbird policies in cross-platform organisational environments

Policy support can be implemented using a JSON file called policies.json. Unlike controlling Thunderbird using Windows Group Policy, the policies.json is cross-platform compatible, making it the preferred method for organisational environments that have workstations running various operating systems.

To implement this policy support, a policies.json file needs to be created. This file goes into a directory called distribution within the Thunderbird installation directory. This directory is not usually included by default, so you may need to manually create it.

The policies.json file looks like this:

{
 "policies": {
   "BlockAboutConfig": true
 }
}

In this example, we are setting the BlockAboutConfig policy to true, which means that the user will not have access to the about:config page.

The latest information about our policies is available in the README on our GitHub repository.

NOTE: The above method will not work if Thunderbird is already being managed using Windows Group Policy.