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"The change has been rolling out over the past few months and essentially means Microsoft is making it harder for free users to avoid ads in Outlook mobile. Wha

"The change has been rolling out over the past few months and essentially means Microsoft is making it harder for free users to avoid ads in Outlook mobile. Whatever inbox mode you use, there’ll be ads somewhere in the mix — either at the top of your Other tab or the top of your regular inbox. Indeed, the only way to now avoid ads in Outlook mobile is to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription." "Microsoft confirmed the change to The Verge. “For free users of Outlook, ads are shown in their inbox and they can choose to enable the ‘Focused inbox’ feature if they would like to see ads only in the ‘Other’ inbox,” says Microsoft spokesperson Caitlin Roulston in a statement." Subscribe or use the ad-supported version. That makes sense. However, I don't understand the point of the Focused Inbox feature. Why not show me all my email and let me create folders and define rules for how my email should be organized? Having their algorithm guess what it thinks is important or not means I need to check two tabs to see all my email. I don't trust their algorithm to not put something that is important into the 'Other' tab where I might not see it.

WorldMaker 4y ago
You can disable Focused Inbox and Outlook doesn't support it for most accounts anyway. From my usage Focused Inbox doesn't seem like that much of an algorithm, it for the most part just seems follow similar rules that Gmail has used for things like the > and >> marks from very early in Gmail history: addressed to you and only you, no Listserv headers of any sort, is a known contact in your address bar. I check both tabs of course, but the primary usefulness of Focused Inbox I've found is in notification management. Lock screen notifications are limited to Focused Inbox, so I often read that "tab" at a glance on my lock screen (during Scheduled Summaries, these days) and reading the "Other Inbox" is closer to "regular email time". Also it's called "Focused Inbox" in part because it only affects the Inbox. Create your own folders and rules and they bypass the Inbox including Focused Inbox.

WorldMaker 4y ago

You can disable Focused Inbox and Outlook doesn't support it for most accounts anyway. From my usage Focused Inbox doesn't seem like that much of an algorithm, it for the most part just seems follow similar rules that Gmail has used for things like the > and >> marks from very early in Gmail history: addressed to you and only you, no Listserv headers of any sort, is a known contact in your address bar. I check both tabs of course, but the primary usefulness of Focused Inbox I've found is in notification management. Lock screen notifications are limited to Focused Inbox, so I often read that "tab" at a glance on my lock screen (during Scheduled Summaries, these days) and reading the "Other Inbox" is closer to "regular email time". Also it's called "Focused Inbox" in part because it only affects the Inbox. Create your own folders and rules and they bypass the Inbox including Focused Inbox.