Those of you who use Outlook.com as your main email client will have noticed that a few changes recently. Just last week there was the closer integration with Gmail that allowed you to access Gmail, er, emails and seamlessly sync your Google Calendar with your Outlook one – something I’d been desperate for Outlook to fix for about a year!
This week Outlook has gone a step further. It’s turning Outlook.com into a Progressive Web Apps (PWA). Which is a complicated way for saying web app. Which, again, is a complicated way of saying its a dedicated web browser for a single website – in this case, Outlook.com.
The benefits include improved performance, better caching, more notification features, and also more background functionality.
If this sounds like something you want – and it should, because it’s the lightweight email client that you’ve (read: I’ve) been crying out for – then you can install the Outlook.com PWA right away. Just follows the steps below.
How to add Outlook.com as an app
The Outlook.com web app is available on Windows, macOS, Chrome OS. The only thing you’ll need to make this work is a Chrome web browser.
You’ve probably already got one of these, but if you’re not already using Chrome, you can download it for free at google.com/chrome/
- Go to Outlook.com
- Log in to your Outlook account
- Click on the + symbol on the right-hand side of the address bar
- Use the Outlook.com app on your Windows, Mac, or Chrome OS device
It’s as simple as that.
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