Skip to main content

How to enable Dark mode in Outlook on Web in Office365 with EWS and PowerShell

Last year at Ignite Microsoft announced Dark mode for Outlook On the Web, while this seem to excite a lot of people I never really caught the buzz. However after taking the plunge after being notification bugged by Outlook this week I've found it to be a nice addition especially if your eyes aren't 100%.

When you enable Dark mode using the slider in Outlook on the Web

 
This changes/creates a setting called "isDarkModeTheme" in the OWA.UserOptions User Configuration Object which is held in the FAI collection (Folder Associated Items) in the Non_IPM_Root of the Mailbox. If you want to enable this setting for a user (or users) programmatically or just want to take stock of who is using this then you can use EWS to Read and Set the value in the OWA.UserOptions User Configuration Object in a Mailbox. (if you want to do this in the Microsoft Graph you will need to cry into your beer at the moment because the Microsoft Graph still doesn't support either user configuration objects or accessing FAI Items 😭😭😭). 

The code to enable dark mode is pretty easy first you need the FolderId for the Non_IPM_Root folder of the Mailbox you want to work with, then bind to the UserConfiguration object which will return the Dictionary from the underlying PR_ROAMING_DICTIONARY property. If Dark mode hasn't been enabled yet then the property shouldn't yet be in the Dictionary but if its is it will either be set to True of False depending on wether its enabled or not. So to Change this all we need is some simple code like the following 

        $folderid= new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Root,$MailboxName)   
        $UsrConfig = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.UserConfiguration]::Bind($service, "OWA.UserOptions", $folderid, [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.UserConfigurationProperties]::All)
        if ($UsrConfig.Dictionary) {
            if($UsrConfig.Dictionary.ContainsKey("isDarkModeTheme")){
                if($Disable.IsPresent){
                    $UsrConfig.Dictionary["isDarkModeTheme"] = $false
                }else{
                    $UsrConfig.Dictionary["isDarkModeTheme"] = $true                    
                }
               
            }else{
                if(!$Disable.IsPresent){
                    $UsrConfig.Dictionary.Add("isDarkModeTheme",$true)
                }
            }
        }
        $UsrConfig.Update()

I've put together a simple script that wraps the above and Oauth authentication and provides two cmdlets for getting and setting Darkmode for Outlook on the Web for a mailbox. Eg 

To Get the Current Dark Mode setting use

 Get-DarkModeSetting -MailboxName mailbox@domain.com

To Enable Dark Mode use

Set-DarkModeSetting -MailboxName mailbox@domain.com (will return Get-DarkModeSetting after the update)

To disable Dark Mode use

Set-DarkModeSetting -MailboxName mailbox@domain.com -Disable

I've put the script up on GitHub https://github.com/gscales/Powershell-Scripts/blob/master/DarkModeMod.ps1 

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Gr...

Exporting and Uploading Mailbox Items using Exchange Web Services using the new ExportItems and UploadItems operations in Exchange 2010 SP1

Two new EWS Operations ExportItems and UploadItems where introduced in Exchange 2010 SP1 that allowed you to do a number of useful things that where previously not possible using Exchange Web Services. Any object that Exchange stores is basically a collection of properties for example a message object is a collection of Message properties, Recipient properties and Attachment properties with a few meta properties that describe the underlying storage thrown in. Normally when using EWS you can access these properties in a number of a ways eg one example is using the strongly type objects such as emailmessage that presents the underlying properties in an intuitive way that's easy to use. Another way is using Extended Properties to access the underlying properties directly. However previously in EWS there was no method to access every property of a message hence there is no way to export or import an item and maintain full fidelity of every property on that item (you could export the...

EWS-FAI Module for browsing and updating Exchange Folder Associated Items from PowerShell

Folder Associated Items are hidden Items in Exchange Mailbox folders that are commonly used to hold configuration settings for various Mailbox Clients and services that use Mailboxes. Some common examples of FAI's are Categories,OWA Signatures and WorkHours there is some more detailed documentation in the https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc463899(v=exchg.80).aspx protocol document. In EWS these configuration items can be accessed via the UserConfiguration operation https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dd899439(v=exchg.150).aspx which will give you access to either the RoamingDictionary, XMLStream or BinaryStream data properties that holds the configuration depending on what type of FAI data is being stored. I've written a number of scripts over the years that target particular FAI's (eg this one that reads the workhours  http://gsexdev.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/finding-timezone-being-used-in-mailbox.html is a good example ) but I didn't have a gene...
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.