Birdtray might be what you’re looking for. I’ve only used it on windows, but for me it gets thunderbird out of the way but able to be checked and used immediately.

https://github.com/gyunaev/birdtray

Just yesterday I got a dell inspiron for this reason. It’s the “we have a laptop at home” macbook air IMO and I only logged into the OEM windows for the 5 min of checking out what’s new windows 11 before installing my OS of choice.