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I'm in need of help configuring a Protonmail account in Thunderbird that requires OTP 2FA

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  • Last reply by Matt

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My Protonmail email account is secured by a OTP that I generate in the Bitwarden password manager (re-generates every 30 seconds). I prefer to use this 2FA method with all of my email accounts that I would like to manage in Thunderbird.

Does Thunderbird support access to an email account that is only accessible using a OTP. I cannot find any settings in the Account Settings user interface that support this.

Thank you for your time.

My Protonmail email account is secured by a OTP that I generate in the Bitwarden password manager (re-generates every 30 seconds). I prefer to use this 2FA method with all of my email accounts that I would like to manage in Thunderbird. Does Thunderbird support access to an email account that is only accessible using a OTP. I cannot find any settings in the Account Settings user interface that support this. Thank you for your time.

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After a trip to Google I assume you are talking about one time passwords.

Now I have Googled bitwarden to see what it does.

Based on that I would say you have little chance of doing what you want.

Thunderbird offers passwords to mail servers, it does not set them. So to start with you will need to set up some sorts of one time password generation that actually works with your mail server, not thunderbird.

Once you have that done you will need a two factor process to send you the new password to give Thunderbird when it asks

Thunderbird will continue using the password for the session until the mail server refuses access because the password has changed and you will be prompted for a new one. In the case of IMAP mail, where push notifications are available and enabled, that could be every 30 seconds as that is the life of the password you have set.

Thunderbird has it's own password manager and uses ,where supported, oAuth authentication which extends authorization token use significantly. But that is only available with big mail providers like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and mail.ru. My guess is you would need an addon, like those used by your chosen solution in browsers to make this fly in any way more than a crippled duck. But as I said in the beginning, I had to Google most of your question because I was not familiar with the product or the terms. I strongly suggest you ask the makers of your password manager solution. It is their supposedly simple security you are trying to shoe horn onto the desktop. But this does not bode well I do not think https://help.bitwarden.com/article/change-your-email/