Open special Gmail & Outlook links to compose a new message

Add-ons Firefox for Android Add-ons
1

My new extension Page Mail supports mailto:, Gmail and Outlook on desktop, opening a compose window pre-filled with Subject and Body using browser.tabs.create(), but in enhancing it for Android, I can only get mailto: to work that way by using window.open() (with annoying Allow/Deny confirmation). With Gmail or Outlook I get the Inbox.

Has anyone figured out a way to open a compose window with special Gmail and/or Outlook links in an Android extension? Thanks!

// Compose URL templates
const MAILTO_TEMPLATE = "mailto:?subject={SUBJECT}&body={BODY}";
const GMAIL_TEMPLATE = "https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&su={SUBJECT}&body={BODY}";
const OUTLOOK_TEMPLATE = "https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/deeplink/compose?subject={SUBJECT}&body={BODY}";
1 Like
2

Just to make sure I follow, you’re trying to open the compose view for Gmail/Outlook as web page in Firefox for Android, right?

If so, I’m seeing this too. I tested by opening the Gmail template URL on desktop using Firefox’s Responsive Design mode to emulate a Samsung phone. I haven’t looked into Outlook.

It seems like Gmail is doing user agent detection and serving a different experience to mobile users. Adding the hash #co (e.g. https://mail.google.com/mail/#co) will open the compose view, but as far as I can tell there’s no way to provide a default subject, recipient, or body.

3

@dotproto
Perplexity agrees with you (link), and suggests there is “No Reliable Web-Only Solution” other than using mailto (which is what I do now).
I was just hoping that someone had found a work-around that Perplexity hasn’t found.