Integrate mailto: handler to open webmail of choice

Dustin

If it's possible, it would be great for Orion to be able to open mailto: links in a webmail of choice. Other browsers have options to manage handlers such as this, as seen in Brave below:

Vlad

Isn't this supposed to happen by system (opening default mail client?)? What happens in Safari?

Dustin

Actually, I'm not entirely sure what the default behaviour for Safari is. I imagine it will prompt to open the stock Mail app. I just removed all of the handler settings in Brave and tested clicking a mailto: link in Safari and it appears to have tried to do something and did not succeed, perhaps because I don't use Apple Mail or have it set up.

In this case, what I am requesting is specifically to open mailto: links in Orion. For example:

Go to your web email provider (Proton for example)
In the site settings, you are given the option (or prompted) if you want Proton to handle mailto links
Click mailto link
New Orion tab opens your email provider's website and starts a new email with the clicked address

I hope that makes sense.

Vlad

Dustin Default Orion behavior is to open the default mail app in the system (which you can change). Assuming your email provider has a desktop app, all you have to do is install it and Orion will open emails in it.

Dustin

Yes, that much is great (and probably the preferred option for most) but my hope was to be able to allow Orion to open mailto: links in a website email of choice instead of a client. That said, it may be minority of users that want a feature like that and therefore not worth the time and energy of the Orion team.

awmottaz

Fastmail has this feature to allow users to set up the web application as the mailto link handler. No desktop app needed.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058753694-Open-mailto-links-in-Fastmail

This is what I see in Orion. In Chrome, I can click on that button and mailto links will open the Fastmail website in Chrome.

Vlad

awmottaz Any tehcnical details on implementation of this?

tim

My default mailto handler was set as Gmail in Brave, so now when I click a mailto link I see this message:

Brave initally shows "mailto:hello@climasens.com" in the address bar but inspecting the network log I see the first request has a status code "302 Internal Redirect" with a Location of "https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=mailto:hello@climasens.com&view" so it looks like a non-standard chromium implementation combined with a specific Gmail url that allows a compose new email to open with the address pre-filled.

Reminder that mailto: links can also contain the subject line, cc, body, etc.

jducoeur

Any progress on this one? While it only comes up occasionally, it's a major headache for me when it does.

That's the case for me today, when I'm trying to use my semi-automated system for sending out a couple of dozen emails. I currently have basically no choice but to use Chrome for this process -- even when I follow all of Apple's instructions and tell my Mac to use Orion for it, Orion has no clue what to do with the operation. (In practice, it winds up dumping the contents of the email into Kagi.)

mailto: is one of the oldest URL types, and still quite useful today -- it's a bit disappointing that Orion can't receive those links and direct them to a webmail interface like GMail or KagiMail.