How to Set Up Focus Filters for Apple Mail on Mac

One of the quieter frustrations of running a Mac with multiple email accounts is that Apple Mail has no native office-hours mode. Open the app at 9 p.m. and there are your work messages, demanding the same attention they demand on a Monday morning. A Focus filter for Mail is the closest Apple has come to fixing this. Added in macOS Ventura, it lets you specify which accounts the Mail app shows while a particular Focus is active. Turn on your Personal Focus and work mail disappears from the sidebar. Turn the Focus off and everything returns. The mail still arrives in the background; it just stays out of view until you decide to look.

This guide walks through the setup, explains how the filter behaves on iPhone and iPad, and covers what to do when the filter never seems to activate or stops working after the first time.

The short answer#

Open System Settings, go to Focus, click the mode you want to configure, scroll down to Focus Filters, and click Add Filter. Choose Mail from the list, select which accounts should be visible while this Focus is on, and save. The next time that Focus activates, Apple Mail shows only the selected accounts and hides the rest. Mail delivery is not interrupted: messages continue arriving in every account and reappear in full as soon as the Focus turns off.

The rest of this guide covers the steps in detail, the differences between Mac and iPhone behaviour, and what to check when the filter seems to be set but nothing changes.

Before you start#

Focus Filters for Mail require macOS Ventura (13) or later. Earlier macOS versions have Focus notification settings but not the per-app account filter — that feature was added in Ventura. If you are on Monterey or older, Apple menu > About This Mac will tell you, and upgrading is the only path to this particular feature.

You also need at least two email accounts configured in Mail. The filter works by showing some accounts and hiding others; if there is only one account, there is nothing to filter. Add accounts in Mail > Settings > Accounts.

One concept to get clear before the steps: a Focus filter and Focus notification settings are different things. Notification settings decide which alerts — banners, sounds, badges — reach you while a Focus is on. A Focus filter for Mail controls which accounts the app shows when you open it. The two operate independently. Silencing Mail notifications does not remove accounts from view, and a Focus filter does not stop delivery notifications for hidden accounts unless you configure the notification settings separately too.

• macOS 13 Ventura or later — Apple menu > About This Mac to confirm
• Two or more accounts in Mail — Mail > Settings > Accounts
• A Focus mode in System Settings — Personal, Work, Do Not Disturb, or a custom one
• iCloud Drive enabled if you want the filter to sync to iPhone or iPad automatically

Steps: set up a Focus filter for Apple Mail#

1. 1

   Open System Settings

   Go to Apple menu > System Settings. On macOS Ventura and later this replaces System Preferences. You can also reach it by clicking the Control Center icon in the menu bar and choosing a shortcut to settings.

2. 2

   Click Focus in the left sidebar

   Focus appears near the top of the sidebar. Clicking it shows every Focus mode you have — typically Personal, Do Not Disturb, and Sleep at a minimum, along with any custom modes you have named.

3. 3

   Select the Focus you want to configure

   Click the name — Personal, for example. This opens its settings panel. Most people configure Personal to hide work accounts when they are off the clock, and Work to hide personal accounts during office hours.

4. 4

   Scroll to Focus Filters and click Add Filter

   Below the Notifications and Allowed Apps sections there is a Focus Filters section. If you have not added any filters before, it shows a button to create the first one. Click Add Filter.

5. 5

   Choose Mail from the app list

   A sheet appears listing apps that support Focus Filters. Not every installed app appears here — only ones that have registered a filter type with the OS. Scroll until you see Mail and click it.

6. 6

   Select the accounts to show while this Focus is on

   A list of every account configured in Apple Mail appears. Toggle on the accounts you want visible during this Focus. Leave the rest off. For a Personal Focus that hides work email, toggle on personal accounts and leave the work accounts untoggled.

7. 7

   Click Add to save, then test immediately

   The filter saves and appears in the Focus Filters list. Turn on the Focus from Control Center right now, then open Mail and confirm only the accounts you selected appear in the sidebar. Turn the Focus off — all accounts should return. If Mail looks unchanged, quit and reopen it; Mail does not always refresh the sidebar while it is already open when a Focus activates.

How the filter behaves on Mac, iPhone, and iPad#

The filter you configure on your Mac can propagate to iPhone and iPad automatically through iCloud, so you usually only need to set it once. A few differences are worth knowing before you assume everything will just work.

When the iCloud sync does not carry the filter to your other devices#

iCloud sync works when both devices share the same Apple ID, iCloud Drive is turned on, and the Focus mode has exactly the same name on both. If the mode is named Personal on your Mac and Do Not Disturb on your iPhone, the system treats them as unrelated modes and does not share filters between them. Rename the Focuses to match, or configure the filter on each device individually.

A less obvious edge case: the filter syncs the account selection, not the account configuration. If your iPhone does not have a particular work account added to its Mail app, the filter entry for that account has nothing to act on — and no error message tells you. Make sure the relevant accounts are set up in Mail on each device before expecting the filter to hide them.

To check whether iCloud Focus sync is active, go to System Settings > Apple Account > iCloud and look for Focus in the list of apps using iCloud.

What to do when the filter does not work#

The filter appears to be set but Apple Mail still shows all accounts. In most cases, one of four things has gone wrong.

The wrong Focus is active. The filter is attached to a specific Focus mode. If you set it on Personal but Work or Do Not Disturb is currently active, the Personal filter does not apply. Open Control Center and confirm which Focus is running.

All accounts are toggled on in the filter. Selecting every account in the filter list is the same as selecting none — Mail shows them all, which is its default. Go back into the filter and leave at least one account toggled off.

The macOS version does not support Focus Filters for Mail. Versions before Ventura show the Focus area in System Settings but do not have the Focus Filters subsection at all. Confirm at Apple menu > About This Mac.

Mail is displaying a cached sidebar. If the Focus activated while Mail was already open, the sidebar can lag. Quit Mail and reopen it after the Focus is on.

A faster way to handle work-personal separation across all your mail#

Apple Mail's Focus filter solves the visibility problem at the OS level, and for a Mac-only setup it does the job. The limit is that it is an account-level toggle — it shows or hides whole accounts, and the moment the Focus turns off, everything that arrived while the accounts were hidden is sitting there waiting, still unsorted.

AI Emaily takes a different approach to the same underlying problem. It is an AI email client that connects Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, and other accounts in a single inbox and applies a triage agent across all of them continuously. The agent flags what needs attention, prepares replies in the voice you specify through a Personal Context brain and per-client profiles — not through passive ingestion of your sent mail — and in Copilot mode waits for your approval before anything sends. You can use a Focus filter in Apple Mail and AI Emaily at the same time; they operate at different levels. The filter controls when you see mail in one app. The agent controls what you have to do about it across all your accounts on any device. We build AI Emaily, and you can start a 7-day free trial at aiemaily.com/pricing.