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Microsoft says “New” Outlook will soon group your notifications and reduce interruptions, aka notification spam, on Windows, but it won’t admit that Outlook Classic loads emails faster, almost more than 10 seconds faster when you open emails via notifications.
It’s crazy that after all these years, Microsoft doesn’t realize New Outlook has a major reliability problem, particularly with notifications. You either don’t receive notifications for your connected accounts, or if you receive notifications for any of your emails, it could take longer than ten seconds to open the mail. I’ve observed this behavior on Windows 11 and Windows 10.
But don’t get me wrong. New Outlook isn’t exactly an unusable or terrible client. It gets the job done, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone because it’s based on Outlook.com, after all.
We’ve been using Outlook.com for decades now, so if that worked for your tasks, New Outlook is also more than enough for personal use, but at the same time, it doesn’t do justice to the Windows client.
Outlook Classic is a perfectly capable product, and New Outlook wasn’t required, but now that we have it, Microsoft has no choice but to maintain it.
As first spotted by Windows Latest, on June 9, Microsoft confirmed that it’s testing a new feature that will group email notifications received within seconds into a single alert.
That means, instead of getting bombarded with dozens of email notifications, which can happen when you sign up or order a product, you’ll get a single notification that says you have received a new email.
I haven’t been able to try grouped notifications on my PC yet, so I asked Microsoft, and it told me that the feature will be available starting in late June, but it won’t roll out to everyone until at least mid-September.
Also, Microsoft plans to turn on notification grouping by default, so you’ll need to opt out from Settings > General > Notifications > Email > Group notifications.
Why is Microsoft adding notification grouping to New Outlook?
Outlook’s upcoming grouped notifications feature is a great idea, and it could reduce notification fatigue.
Microsoft’s study found that grouping notifications could help improve focus and make you more productive.
This feature will roll out to both Outlook on the web and Outlook for Windows, and once you have it, you will notice that some notifications are now grouped. The grouping happens when multiple emails arrive within a few seconds, and if you click a grouped notification, it opens the most recent email in the inbox.
You can always go back to the inbox and find the other emails sent as part of the group.
Outlook Classic is far better than New Outlook for notification management
Outlook Classic “Win32” app has been around for almost three decades, and while it’s no longer the center of attention at Microsoft, it still does many things better than the glorified web app, aka “New Outlook.”
In our tests, Windows Latest found that when you receive an email notification via New Outlook and click on the alert, it can take anywhere between 10 seconds and 30 seconds for Outlook to open and slowly load the email. If you don’t believe me, look at the video below from our benchmark:
New Outlook is so bad at notifications that you could literally open New Outlook and navigate to the email manually faster than by clicking the alert in Windows Notification Center:
Outlook Classic, which is supposedly old and “legacy” code, smokes New Outlook and opens emails in a second or two when you hit the notifications:
Also, it’s not just about performance because I’ve observed that New Outlook notifications are a hit or miss for connected accounts.
For example, on a PC with close to 10 Microsoft 365 domains/accounts, I do not get alerts for all my accounts all the time. It’s a hit or miss, and there’s no pattern other than the fact that New Outlook can be messy with notifications.
Microsoft previously told Windows Latest that it’s aware of unreliable email notifications and is working on a fix. Now, we’re also getting grouped notifications, which is a nice improvement, and there are up to 10 major changes planned for New Outlook in 2026, but we do not have any word from Microsoft on slow email opening.
What is your wishlist for New Outlook? Let me know in the comments below.
The post Microsoft is killing New Outlook’s notification spam, but Classic still loads emails faster on Windows appeared first on Windows Latest
