Compare Chrome extensions: OWA User-Agent vs Gmail-OWA

Stats OWA User-Agent OWA User-Agent Gmail-OWA Gmail-OWA
User count 5,000+ 1,798+
Average rating 4.33 0.00
Rating count 42 0
Last updated 2017-06-18 2020-09-22
Size 11.98K 9.93K
Version 0.1.1 1.1
Short description
Allow the full version of Outlook Web Access (OWA) to be used in Chrome/Chromium in Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX. Converts Gmail specific links to use Outlook Web Access instead.
Full summary

The problem: Microsoft Outlook Web Access sniffs the User Agent HTTP header* to see if the user is using Windows and delivers a poorer experience without.

The solution: OWA-User-Agent is a simple plugin for Chrome that replaces the Linux UA string with one that is marked Windows so that full OWA can be used from within Linux and possibly OSX.

This is open source software. Sources available here: https://github.com/jamiesonbecker/owa-user-agent

No changes needed -- if the OWA URL contains /owa/ then it will work. Tested against two different enterprise installations of OWA.

  • For exactly this reason, the W3C considers user agent sniffing to be bad practice.

Using Google Classroom but using Outlook instead of Gmail?

With this extension enabled, Gmail links in Google Classroom will open in Outlook Web Access instead. Clicking on the extension icon will toggle it on and off so you can still open Gmail links in Gmail if desired.

Not using the web version of Outlook? Check out Gmail Link Fixer, which converts Google email links to standard mail links that open in the Outlook desktop app (or other email programs).