Microsoft is making Outlook for Mac free to use today. Outlook is now available free in Apple’s App Store, and you no longer need a Microsoft 365 subscription or Office license to use it. It’s a surprise move that coincides with Microsoft’s push to make its Windows desktop Outlook email client more web-powered.

Outlook for Mac includes support for Outlook.com accounts, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, and any email provider that has IMAP support. Microsoft redesigned its Mac email client in 2020, with a user interface that’s optimized for Apple’s latest macOS design changes.

Outlook is one of the most popular productivity apps, enjoying widespread use across Windows, Mac and iOS/iPadOS. In order to support those platforms, however, Microsoft has to maintain multiple version of the application, one for each platform. This represents a significant degree of overhead, even for a company as large as Microsoft.

While web technologies were once used strictly in the creation of websites and web-based applications, modern advances have paved the way for web languages and technologies to be used in desktop applications. This has been a boon for developers, making it relatively easy to target the web, desktop and mobile platforms from a single codebase.

According to Zac Bowden at Windows Central, Microsoft is preparing to take this approach with Outlook, basing a single desktop client on the web version of Outlook. Codenamed Project Monarch, the new approach is the culmination of Microsoft’s “One Outlook” vision.

Bowden’s sources tell him the new version will still behave like a standard desktop app, complete with offline storage, native OS components, notifications, share targets and more.

This is good news for Outlook users, as it will help ensure that all users enjoy the same features and experience.