Microsoft has recently decided to make its Outlook email app free for Mac users in the App Store and will add new features.
Outlook on Mac is now free
The Outlook app no longer requires a Microsoft 365 subscription or an Office license, Microsoft announced on Monday.
Outlook for Mac is now Apple Silicon native, and includes support for Outlook.com accounts, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, and other email providers that support IMAP. The app is also optimized for Macs with Apple Silicon and supports Handoff so that iOS users can resume work they started on their Mac.
Other features of Outlook for Mac include a widget for calendar entries, native notification support, and a menu bar "peek" option to view calendar entries within the app quickly. Microsoft also plans to support Focus Mode in the future, which lets Apple users create profiles and fine-tune notifications and other aspects of their devices.
An upcoming menu bar peek feature
The Outlook Profiles will help prevent unwanted notifications at the wrong time so users can stay focused on important emails. Moreover, Outlook offers extra choices for prominently displaying critical emails.
With a Focused inbox, the app automatically sorts important emails from unimportant ones so users can find them with a toggle above the message list. Users can pin messages to keep them at the top or snooze non-urgent ones for later, with further options for categories, flagging, and adding frequently-used folders to the Favorites section.
Outlook for Mac is available from the Mac App Store as a 974MB download. It requires macOS 11 Big Sur or a newer operating system.