Change Thunderbird default encoding for composing messages

Question

Whenever I compose a new email message in Thunderbird, it defaults to the Western (ISO-8859-1) encoding, and I have to manually change it to UTF-8 every time.

How do I change the default?

Answer 1

Tools → Options → Display → Formatting → Fonts → Advanced... → Character Encodings → Outgoing Mail:

Answer 2

For Thunderbird 17 on the Mac, you can find this setting at:

Thunderbird > Preferences > Display > Formatting > Advanced

Look at the Character Encodings section, as seen here:

Answer 3

On Mac OS X you have to use the Config Editor (also know as about:config) found in Preferences -> Advanced -> General. Change the value of the preference named mailnews.send_default_charset to UTF-8.