Turn Off Focused Inbox in Outlook Mobile (Android & iOS)

Focused Inbox splits the Outlook mobile app into two tabs — Focused and Other — and routes messages the algorithm considers lower priority into Other. Many users find the idea appealing but the execution frustrating: client emails, follow-up replies, and time-sensitive messages regularly end up buried in Other, unseen until they scroll back through the wrong tab. If you want to know how to turn off Focused Inbox in Outlook mobile, the answer is a four-tap path inside the app's Settings — but there is a detail that catches almost everyone.

The setting is per-device and per-account. Turning off Focused Inbox on your iPhone has no effect on your Windows laptop, and it has no effect on Outlook on the web either. Microsoft stores the preference locally on each surface, not as a mailbox-wide setting in Exchange or Microsoft 365. If you use Outlook across multiple devices, you will need to find and change the toggle on each one individually, in different menu locations, before the split view disappears everywhere.

This guide covers the exact steps for Android and iOS, a table showing where the setting lives on every Outlook surface, the most common reasons the toggle appears greyed out or fails to stick, and what happens to your notification preferences after you make the change.

The short answer#

In the Outlook mobile app on either Android or iOS, tap your profile photo or initials in the top-left corner of the screen. A left-side panel opens. At the bottom-left of that panel, tap the gear icon to enter Settings. Under Mail Accounts, select the email account you want to change. Scroll to the Focused Inbox row and tap the toggle to turn it off. The Focused and Other tabs vanish from the inbox and all messages appear in a single view.

The scope of the change is limited to this account on this device. Your desktop version of Outlook — whether classic Outlook for Windows, the new Outlook for Windows, or Outlook for Mac — has a completely separate Focused Inbox setting in the ribbon or in Settings. Outlook on the web has its own toggle buried in Settings under Mail. None of those update automatically when you change the mobile app.

If you share a Microsoft 365 account across a phone, a tablet, and a laptop, you may turn off Focused Inbox on the phone in the morning, forget about it on the laptop, and then wonder why the Other tab is still showing up when you switch devices. The answer is that the laptop has not been told yet.

Before you start#

Check a few things before you go looking for the toggle so you do not spend time in the wrong menu.

First, confirm the Outlook app is reasonably current. Microsoft moves settings between versions, and an older build may show the toggle in a different location or display a slightly different label. If the steps below do not match what you see, check for a pending update in the App Store or Google Play.

Second, if the account connected to your Outlook app is a work or school account managed by an IT department, your administrator may have locked Focused Inbox via an Exchange or Microsoft 365 policy. When that policy is active, the toggle appears in the account settings but is greyed out and cannot be changed. No in-app workaround exists; the change has to happen at the policy level. If you see a greyed-out toggle, the troubleshooting section later in this guide covers what to do.

Third, think about which accounts need the change. The Outlook mobile app can hold multiple accounts simultaneously — a personal Outlook.com address, a work Microsoft 365 mailbox, a Gmail account. The Focused Inbox setting is stored per account. If more than one of your connected accounts has Focused Inbox active, you will need to disable it on each one in turn. There is no global switch that covers all accounts at once.

Finally, note that Focused Inbox is only available on Microsoft account types. Accounts added via IMAP — a generic Gmail, iCloud, or custom domain address connected through username and password — do not support Focused Inbox and will not show the toggle in their settings at all.

How to turn off Focused Inbox in the Outlook app#

The path is the same on iOS and Android. A minor difference on some Android builds is noted in step 2.

1. 1

   Open the Outlook app

   Launch the Outlook app on your phone. You will see the inbox with Focused and Other tabs along the top.

2. 2

   Tap your profile photo or initials

   Tap the circle in the top-left corner — it shows your profile photo or your initials if no photo is set. On some Android builds, a hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) appears in this position instead. Tap whichever you see.

3. 3

   Open Settings

   A slide-out panel appears on the left side of the screen. At the bottom-left corner of this panel, tap the gear icon. This opens the Outlook Settings screen.

4. 4

   Select your email account

   Under the Mail Accounts heading, tap the account you want to change. Each connected account has its own entry. If you have more than one account, you will need to repeat this step for each one after finishing the current account.

5. 5

   Toggle Focused Inbox off

   Scroll down the account settings page until you see the Focused Inbox row. Tap the toggle on the right side of that row. The switch moves to the grey position, indicating it is now off.

6. 6

   Return to your inbox

   Tap the back arrow to return to the main inbox. The Focused and Other tabs are gone. All messages for that account now appear in a single, unified inbox view. If you have additional accounts that need the same change, go back into Settings and repeat steps 4 and 5 for each one.

Does turning off Focused Inbox on mobile affect desktop Outlook?#

No. The setting is stored independently on each Outlook surface. Changing it on your phone has no effect on classic Outlook for Windows, the new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, or Outlook on the web. Each of those platforms has its own Focused Inbox toggle in a different location, and each needs to be changed individually.

Use the table below to find the correct path for every surface you use Outlook on.

What to do when Focused Inbox will not turn off#

Five situations come up regularly when the toggle does not behave as expected.

The toggle is greyed out. Your organization's IT administrator has applied a Microsoft 365 or Exchange policy that enforces Focused Inbox for managed mailboxes. You cannot override it from the app. The only path to changing this is asking IT to remove the Focused Inbox enforcement policy for your account specifically. Until that policy is removed, the toggle will remain greyed out regardless of how many times you tap it.

Emails are still landing in Other after disabling. When you turn off Focused Inbox, the Focused and Other tabs disappear immediately for new mail on that account on that device. Messages that were already sorted into Other do not automatically move. They stay in the Other view until they age out of view or you search for them by sender or subject. This is expected behavior, not a bug. If the Other tab is still appearing in your inbox view, it is likely because Focused Inbox is still active on another device or in Outlook on the web, and your inbox is reflecting that session's state. Use the platform table above and disable it everywhere.

Focused Inbox appears to have re-enabled itself. Outlook does not re-enable Focused Inbox on its own, but it can look that way if you disabled it on your phone and then opened Outlook on a laptop where it is still on. Each device renders its own setting. Check the table above and disable it on the device where it is still showing the two-tab split.

Notifications only come for Focused messages after you disable the feature. Some builds of the Outlook app ship with a notification filter set to Focused Only, which means push notifications only trigger for messages that the algorithm routes to Focused. When you turn off Focused Inbox, that filter may remain in place, so you receive fewer push notifications than expected because the app is still looking for a Focused tab that no longer exists. To fix this, go to Settings in the Outlook app, tap Notifications, and confirm the notification scope is set to All Mail rather than Focused Only.

The Outlook app does not show Focused Inbox in the account settings at all. As noted in the Before You Start section, IMAP accounts do not support Focused Inbox. If the account you are looking at was added via IMAP credentials rather than through Microsoft sign-in, there is no toggle to find. The two-tab split only applies to Microsoft account types.

A faster way: let AI handle what Focused Inbox was trying to do#

Focused Inbox tries to solve a real problem — inbox volume, weak signal — with a fixed two-bucket sort. When you turn it off, the sorting problem does not go away. You now have a unified inbox, but it is unsorted, and the messages that should be at the top still require manual triage every time you open the app.

AI Emaily is an AI-native email client that connects your Outlook account alongside Gmail and other providers, and triages each message using AI rather than a static algorithm. It reads what each message actually says, surfaces the threads that need your attention, and clears the noise — without splitting the inbox into tabs you have to check separately. When a reply is needed, it drafts in your voice using your user-set Context brain and per-client profiles, not by training on your past mail. When a follow-up is about to go cold, it flags or sends the nudge, at whatever autonomy level you set: review-before-send Copilot mode or a gated Autopilot with full undo and an audit trail.

We build AI Emaily. If you are turning off Focused Inbox because the two-tab split misjudges your mail, AI Emaily's per-message AI triage is a meaningful improvement over static buckets. A 7-day free trial is available at aiemaily.com.