Test Drive the Future Look of Microsoft Outlook
Outlook and Microsoft’s email applications for Windows, Mac and the web will see big changes in the coming months as part of the company’s One Outlook initiative. Why wait? You can get a preview of what your Outlook will turn into right now.
Later this year, you can expect Microsoft to standardize user experience in Outlook apps on Mac, Windows, and the web, as well as Mail & Calendar apps in Windows 10. Then, in 2022, each of these apps will migrate to new client “Monarch”, which means you will be using the same application on all platforms.
According to Windows Central , Microsoft says the new Monarch client will add more OS-level integrations for Windows and Mac, including “offline storage, sharing targets, notifications,” so the new Outlook will feel like a native app for every desktop operating system or web. the browser you are using.
Implementation of these changes will be slow, but you can preview the new cross-platform experience by installing the new Mail Progressive Web App (PWA) today.
How to install Outlook PWA on Edge Chromium:
- Go to outlook.com.
- Click “…” to open the menu.
- Go to Applications, click Install this site as an application.
- The PWA will open after the installation is complete.
In Google Chrome:
- Open outlook.com in a new tab.
- Click the + button on the right side of the URL bar (this may take a while. Try clicking in the URL bar if it doesn’t appear).
- When prompted, click Install .
Compared to the Mail and Calendar apps in Windows 10, the look and feel of Outlook PWA is much simpler. It lacks the visual customization options that you could use to customize Outlook in various ways, but it is much cleaner and includes the same email functionality as well as calendar and to-do views. The similarities should make it much easier to move to a PWA – or ultimately, a new UI for the various Outlook and Mail apps later this year.
Outlook PWA also includes easily accessible shortcuts to other MS apps like Word, OneDrive, One Note, Meet, and Skype. You can even manage your Xbox Live and Skype accounts from your profile settings as long as they use the same email address.
This is already a much more robust surface-level integration into the MS ecosystem, and I’m curious to see how it expands after Monarch’s release in 2022.