After signing into your Gmail or Outlook account in Chrome or Micorosft Edge browser you’ll notice a diamond icon in the address bar, which on hover says the message: ‘page wants to install a service handler‘. Why Chrome is showing this message in Gmail and what happens when you click on that icon, find out details about that below.
Page wants to install a service handler
By showing the diamong icon in the address bar, web browser here saying respective email service wants to install a service handler, which when you allow, Gmail or Outlook will be set as default email client to open all mailto: links.
If you selct Deny or Ignore and click Done, you won’t notice the service handler icon again when you visit the page next time in web browser.
What happens when you accidentally click on mailto: link in a web browser, outlook client, or Mail on Windows opens, that’s annoying, you may want to open mailto: links with web email service in the browser.
Make Gmail in Chrome as a default email client on Windows 11/ Windows 10
- visit mail.google.com
- Click on service handler icon (diamond), when you’re asked to ‘Allow mail.google.com to open email links,
- Select ‘Allow’ and click “Done”.
- If you’re on Windows 10/11, the Settings app may open the default apps page and prompts you to choose a new app to manage Email instead of Mail, click on Mail and choose Chrome, done.
Visit chrome://settings/handlers page to see mail.google.com added as the default handler for mailto protocol.
Disable Page wants to install service handler icon/message
- Visit chrome://settings/handlers
- Under “Not allowed handle protocols”, ensure mail.google.com is listed.
Read How to Disable Service/Site Handler Requests in Google Chrome
Final words:
Is the diamond icon in addres bar bothering you with message page wants to install service handler, understand, Gmail or outlook Email service page in web browser is letting you know, it can open all mailto links if you allow the service handler request. If you don’t want to see service handler message, you can disbale it also with the instrucitons posted in this article.
So, what’s your point? I mean, I probably have a newer version of Chrome and I just finished clearing all my browsing histories, (several browsers), as well as cache and all that. Then I restarted the computer, (windows 7 HP 64bit on a high perf desktop), and these two ‘gray squares overlapping each other is the icon that now shows up in the Google gmail taskbar.
It says the same thing, (about the ‘handler’ message), and I wanted to know what it’s really asking. So here I am and now I’ve read your paragraph or two and have no idea what you’re trying to say… I mean, are you suggesting something?
The post was written when feature was not readied for users, now it is. Now all you need to do when next time that protocol handler icon appears on address bar click on it which shows dialog “allow Gmail(mail.google.com) to open all email links with options as Use Gmail, No and Ignore. You can select No or ignore from the dialog. Choosing ignore may show same icon again for same Gmail account, but when you choose “No” that service handler icon won’t apepar in future again. Rich hope I’ve cleared your doubts.
You can read about it here http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1382847
“this page wants to install a service handler” Is this a good thing or not?
It comes down to user, its the browser wise of saying things. Please read this comment and this post for more clarity. Thanks.
https://techdows.com/2012/08/gmail-service-handler-icon-in-chrome.html#comment-18273
https://techdows.com/2013/05/disable-chrome-service-handler-requests.html
I don’t see the double diamond icon. Nor do I see a way I can open the service handler. Has Gmail or Chrome updated or changed these options? I can change my Windows 10 email client. But I don’t know if changing this to Chrome will enable Windows to also change the default e mail client.