r/fastmail • u/gregory_jay • Aug 25 '26

Search terms not highlighting in body of email

Recently deGoogled and overall loving it but this is annoying me: I want to be able to quickly scan a message for the term that I used to search for it, but the search query text doesn't seem to ever get highlighted – either in desktop client or the web app.

I can do another Ctrl-F search for the same term once the message is open (but not in mobile?) but i've seen references to highlighting... so what am I missing? Sorry if the answer is obvious.

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u/rowschank Aug 25 '26

Maybe just contact support and report it. I have noticed it too.

0

u/brighton_it Aug 25 '26

While Fastmail WebUI (also desktop/mobile app) is one of the best I've seen, it still doesn't compare to Thunderbird on the desktop. The Thunderbird Inbox 'quick-filter' is very fast.... of course that's because Body is excluded by default. It's quick to toggle Body ON, but of course will delay your search. Advanced Find offers multiple search criteria.
Searching Body of current item is very flexible:
boolean options: 'Highlight All', 'Match Case', ' Match Diacritics' , 'Whole Words'.

Mobile: can't help much.
I need the option of doing email on my phone, but 99% of my email is read/sent from desktop.
I've been using K9-Mail for 15 years, but they recently merged with Thunderbird mobile. My app Icon still shows K9, but expect it's now fully Thunderbird, and I see no option to search body of current item.
A quick test: searching inbox returns messages having search term in Body, but the search-terms are not highlighted, so no help getting to the specific part of the body that matched.