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CSS property · data last changed 10 Nov 2026

background-origin in email clients

Works in 14 of 21. Not supported in Outlook Classic, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Mail Android and 2 more. Partial in Gmail Android and Gmail iOS.

Your reader in Outlook Classic sees the email without background-origin, even if it looks right where you tested it.

caniemail (MIT) via @emailens/engine 0.18.22

What to do instead in Outlook Classic

  • Background images origin can be used in VML with the origin attribute. See VML documentation.

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background-origin is not among the 24 features we have screenshotted on real installs. The ones we have →

All 21 clients, problems first

ClientSupport
Outlook Classic Not supported See caveat 1
Yahoo Mail Not supported
Yahoo Mail Android Not supported
Yahoo Mail iOS Not supported
AOL Mail Not supported
Gmail Android Partial
Gmail iOS Partial
Works in 14: Gmail, Outlook 365, Outlook (New) and 11 more. Show all
ClientSupport
Gmail Works
Outlook 365 Works
Outlook (New) Works
Outlook iOS Works
Outlook Android Works
Outlook for Mac Works
Apple Mail Works
Apple Mail iOS Works
Samsung Mail Works
Thunderbird Works
HEY Mail Works
Proton Mail Works
Fastmail Works
Superhuman Works

Caveats (1)

  1. 1. Outlook Classic: Background images origin can be used in VML with the origin attribute. See VML documentation.

Caveats as recorded by caniemail (MIT), one entry per wording.

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caniemail (MIT) via @emailens/engine 0.18.22 · tested upstream 28 Feb 2019 · data last changed 10 Nov 2026 · Outlook (New) cells are the engine's mapping