Do you use a single app with multiple accounts or separate apps for work and personal email accounts?
Which app? Why?
Mail app for both Mac and iOS works fine for me. Only thing I miss is Share sheet on both.
Definitely separate work and personal.
I use Apple Mail for work and personal email. With the filtering in focus mode I can hide the accounts I donāt want to see. In my work focus mode only my work email account is visible. My home and general focus modes hide the work account but leave my personal and band email accounts visible.
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I use the Apple Mail App on five Apple devices with multiple email accounts.
- Separate Apps on (companyās) Mac: Outlook for work email, Fastmate for personal email
- Single App on iPhone/iPad: Fastmail App for personal email
- No App on PC: Fastmail in browser for personal email
Note: Iām not allowed to read work email on personal devices.
I did not know that this was possible. Is this something that is available in focus settings only or there is a way to hide (not disable) personal email?
This is available in the Focus settings. Open the āworkā focus mode and scroll down to the bottom, tap on āAdd Filter.ā Then select the Mail app you use. It will then give you a list of all accounts set up on the app. Select any accounts you want enabled in that focus mode (probably your work account). Then do the same for the āpersonalā focus mode.
Note that this will only work if notifications are turned on for all accounts in the Mail app and notification settings. Only the focus mode should be filtering (or blocking) those notifications. And of course, unless you want to have times when you receive everything, you need to always have some focus mode enabled at all times.
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I use outlook for work, and the Mail App for everything else, except for Spark for a hobby account.
If thereās one thing I canāt take, itās email notifications buzzing all day. I donāt get a ton of email (maybe 15 or say a day at work, 3-4 personal), but still.
My preferred method is stock Mail for personal, but only family members as VIPās. This way I donāt get notifications for emails telling me my water bill is due next week or that my Amazon order has shipped.
For work I use Outlook, mostly because I work in a corporate, 365 environment. It pulls contacts from the directory at work (something the stock app isnāt great at), and it just seems to have more functionality for work-related tasks. I also have this set up so I only get a notification if an email is from my boss or a colleague.
I put the Mail app in my dock on iOS and iPad, and the Outlook app is not on any screen ā I have to want to find it to use it.
And Iām absolutely ruthless about unsolicited emails. If I sign up for something and they start emailing me, they get blocked/unsubscribed to right away. I absolutely cannot stand useless mail filling up my inbox.
I recently purchased an item from an online site. I wonāt mention any of āWillaims Sonomaāsā names, but this vendor started sending multiple emails a day!
āLooks like something caught your eye, still interested?ā with a picture and link to the item I had already purchased!
I donāt mind sending me a (note I wrote āaā) follow up email, or an email if there is a price drop, but not for things Iāve already bought. And not multiple times a day. Who in the marketing department thinks this is a good idea?
Needless to say Iām not receiving any emails from this vendor anymore.
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Mailmate on the Mac and Apple Mail on iOS
Most mail goes through Fastmail, but keep an Apple mail account, well just because itās my name @me.com which is quite easy to tell the odd local person who needs it.
I use two email clients (same setup on Mac and iPhone) ā Mail.app for personal and Outlook for work. Like someone mentioned above Outlook just integrates with all the enterprise stuff so much better than Mail.app.
This helps me keep work and personal separate without having to mess with focus modes since life is not as simple and binary as focus modes would like to imply.
Naturally all notifications are turned off for all mail accounts and apps on all my devices. Iāll check it at my convenience.
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Hello @slyfox,
My apologies for the slow reply. Iāve been away from any sort of internet connect for the last couple of days.
It is possible to hide accounts based upon the focus mode you are in. For example, I am currently in my work focus mode and my other two email accounts (band and personal) are hidden. If you look at the photo below you can see the moon symbol next to the hidden account. When I click on the āAll Inboxesā icon I can only see the inbox for my work email, and the number next to the label will only show me how many unread emails are in my work account, not the other two. This also hides the Sanebox folders that I have setup. I can click on them if I wish to see what is in there but I cannot see how many unread messages are in those folder.
Iāve just switched on my home focus and now when I click on āAll Inboxesā I can see my personal and band inboxes, and my Sandbox folder for those accounts are now visible. My work account (Exchange) is now hidden and I do not see any of its emails when I visit āAll Inboxesā. Now I can see the unread email in the non-work inboxes, as well as any unread message in my Sanebox folders. Again, if I choose to click on my work account I can see what is there but I have to actively choose to do that.
Iāve uploaded a short video to YouTube showing how I set this up in the focus mode section of System Settings. Once you have setup a filter for email you just pick the account(s) that you want to be visible in that focus mode. The one in the video is showing my work focus mode with just my Exchange account ticked. In my home focus mode the personal and band accounts are ticked, no the work/Exchange account.
Hope this helps you see how my setup works.
Darran West
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Single app, Apple mail on a single machine with multiple email accounts. Separated not only by work vs personal but I have accounts for roles like registrar @ blackwelsh.org or secretary @ or treasurer @ various organizations. I lso separate out the email I use for all billing and financial stuff.
and yes, an old dinosaur here, all mine are POP accounts. I donāt do email on any mobile device only on a single main computer.
When Iāve traveled only twice in the last 2 years, I will log on with a web browser to the web interface for the most important accounts to keep mostly current but I also donāt really worry about it much .
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+1
This is how Iāve always done my e-mail. But if you are a dinosaur, of the Jurassic period, that must put me in the earlier Paleozoic age! 
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I use Postbox for personal mail, have used Apple Mail for many years and even own Mailmate. So far Postbox has stuck.
For work, I use Outlook, cause I have to. We are an O365 shop and it just plays nice with everything, Iāve tried using Apple Mail in that environment and it just doesnāt work like it should for me.
On iOS, I have Apple Mail for personal, but I check it manually so it isnāa always bugging me.
Last, work gave me a Samsung S20, that I donāt like, but I run Outlook on that to keep everything separate.
Separate. Always separate. There is always a non-zero risk of mingling personal with corporate email.
And of course some of my clients require me to use their laptops and use their email system, so that separation is enforced by them.
Katie
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