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How to add an email signature in Apple Mail

Apple Mail on a Mac will take a formatted signature, but there is one checkbox that has to be off before you paste or it flattens everything you paste into it. Turn that off first and the rest is short.

Do not have a signature yet?

Make one first. The generator is free, needs no account, and gives you something to paste before you open your settings.

Open the free email signature generator

Add the signature

  1. Copy your signature from the generator with the Copy signature button.Copy signature puts the formatted version on your clipboard, which is the one you want. Copy HTML is for pasting into a system that asks for source code.
  2. Open Mail, choose Mail, then Settings, then click Signatures.On macOS Monterey and earlier the menu item is called Preferences rather than Settings. Everything below it is the same.
  3. In the left column, select the account this signature belongs to.If you leave All Signatures selected, Apple notes you have to drag the new signature onto an account before you can use it. Picking the account first avoids that.
  4. Click the Add button below the middle column and type a name for the signature.
  5. Uncheck Always match my default message font.Do this before you paste. That option makes the signature use the message font from Fonts & Colors settings, which overrides the fonts, sizes and colors in the signature you just made.
  6. Click into the preview on the right, select whatever Mail put there already, delete it, and paste your signature.If Mail has already put your name and address in the box, clearing it first stops you ending up with both.
  7. Use the Choose Signature pop-up menu to make it the default for this account.Leave it on None if you would rather pick a signature per message from the Signature menu in the compose window.
  8. If you want your signature to sit below quoted text when you reply, deselect Place signature above quoted text.

Things worth knowing

The editor preview lies, so send yourself a test

Apple publishes no procedure for installing an HTML signature, and the preview inside the Signatures screen routinely renders one badly even when a real message renders it correctly. Write yourself an email before you conclude the signature is broken.

Signatures follow you across Macs

If iCloud Drive is on and Mail is selected in its options, your signatures are available on your other Macs. That also means editing one on any of them changes it everywhere.

Removing a signature

Select it in the middle column and click Remove. Removing it while All Signatures is selected deletes it from every account that was using it.

Images have to stay publicly reachable

Mail loads your logo and photo from the address they live at, and so does every recipient. Apple Mail can also be set to block remote content, in which case images stay blank until the reader loads them.

Using a different email client?

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