Mac OS: Stop desktop cluttering caused by ThunderBird

As you’re reading these lines, you’ve been probably affected by annoying bug in ThunderBird related to dealing with attachments.
I’ve published this post just to sum up my google findings on one place – details described f.e. here.

Scenario is easy – when you open an attachment directly and have a helper application assigned (like MS Word for doc), given file also gets stored automatically on desktop. There is no option effectively affecting this behavior currently available , so your desktop can get quite messy after a while.

You have two options here

  1. Auto delete of temporarily opened files on ThunderBird exit

    Create and set to true browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit in TB configuration

  2. Change the download directory via different application

    Safari 2.x should work for Mac OS 10.4, whereas Camino works for Mac OS 10.5