How to Use the Windows Mail App

Windows 10 and Windows 11 come with a free email app built right in — it's called Mail (or sometimes "Mail & Calendar"). You don't have to download anything to use it. It's already on your computer, waiting in the Start menu.

The Mail app works with most popular email services including Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, and many others. Once you connect your email account, you can read, reply to, and write new emails directly from your Windows desktop, just like you would in a web browser — but without needing to open a browser at all.

The Mail app is designed to be straightforward. The left side of the screen shows your mailbox folders (inbox, sent mail, junk, etc.), the middle shows a list of your emails, and the right side shows the full message when you click one. Everything is in large, readable text by default.

One particularly useful feature: the Mail app can handle multiple email accounts at once. If you have a Gmail address and a Hotmail address, you can add both and switch between them from the same app.

This guide will walk you through setting up the Mail app with a Gmail account as an example. The steps are similar for other email providers. Note: Windows 11 newer versions have replaced Mail with the Outlook app — if you see "Outlook" instead of "Mail" in your Start menu, the steps are very similar but the app looks slightly different.