How to change your email signature in Apple Mail
Mac and iPhone work differently, and Mac has one setting that quietly strips your formatting until you turn it off.
This is an approximation. Email clients render differently - Outlook especially - so expect small differences in spacing. If you paste into a text editor or a code window, you'll get plain text - that's normal. The formatting only survives if you paste somewhere that accepts it, like your email client's signature field.
Nothing you type is uploaded to our server or saved - the tool runs in your browser only.
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Apple Mail's signature setting lives in its own Settings window, separate from any single email account.
- 1.Open the Mail menu, then Settings (or Preferences, on older versions of macOS).
- 2.Click the Signatures tab, then select the email account in the left-hand column.
- 3.Click the + button below the middle column, then paste your signature into the right-hand pane.
- 4.Close the Settings window. Apple Mail saves automatically.
Things worth knowing about Apple Mail signatures
The font-matching setting will strip your formatting. In Mail's signature preferences there's a checkbox marked "Always match my default message font." While it's ticked, any formatted signature you paste is flattened to plain text immediately. Untick it before pasting, not after.
iPhone and iPad are plain text only. There's no formatted signature on iOS at all: no bold, no links, no images. If you send meaningfully from your phone, write a plain text version rather than fighting it.
Signatures are set per account. If you have several email accounts in Mail, each needs its own signature, and there's a separate control for assigning them.
They may sync via iCloud, and that cuts both ways. If iCloud Drive is syncing Mail settings, a signature set on one Mac can appear on another. Convenient, unless you wanted them different.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my signature look different in Apple Mail than in the preview here?
- Apple Mail renders reasonably close to a browser, so it should be one of the better matches. If it's badly wrong, check whether "Always match my default message font" is still enabled: that setting overrides the signature's styling entirely.
- My signature pasted as plain text.
- Almost certainly the font-matching setting. Untick it in Mail's signature preferences, then paste again.
- Can I use a formatted signature on my iPhone?
- No. Apple Mail on iOS supports plain text signatures only. Set a formatted one on your Mac for desktop use and a plain text version on your phone.