Microsoft has started placing more ads in Outlook Mobile for iOS and Android in recent months.
The Outlook Mobile app gives users two options for organizing their inbox: a single inbox with everything in it, or a tabbed inbox split into two categories: “Focused” on important email and “Other” with everything else. Previously, Microsoft only placed ads in the “Other” tab for free users, but now adds them to the single inbox mode as well.
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The change has been made in recent months and essentially means that Microsoft is making it harder for free users to avoid ads in Outlook Mobile. Whatever inbox mode you use, there will be ads somewhere in the mix – either at the top of your Other tab or at the top of your regular inbox. The only way to avoid ads in Outlook Mobile now is to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Microsoft has confirmed the change in: The edge. “For free Outlook users, ads will appear in their inboxes and can choose to enable the ‘Targeted Inbox’ feature if they only want to see ads in the ‘Other’ inbox,” Microsoft spokesperson Caitlin Roulston said in a statement. .
The ads appear at the top of an inbox and look confusingly like real emails, similar to how both Microsoft and Google display ads in the web versions of Outlook and Gmail. You can swipe to remove the email-like ads, but they quickly reappear and opening one shows ad content in an in-app browser.
Nobody likes ads, and Outlook Mobile users have left numerous one-star complaints for the app on Apple’s App Store. Some on Twitter and Reddit have also expressed frustration at more ads appearing in Outlook Mobile, but the only way to avoid them completely right now is to subscribe to Microsoft 365.
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