[Update]: This article was updated on September 13, 2021.
Creating and adding your email signature to Apple Mail (or Mac Mail, whichever name you like more) should be as easy as possible. Is it, though? If you’ve ever had any problem with setting up your email signature in Apple Mail, this guide is for you. I’ll show you how to create an email signature with a free email signature generator and how to add it to the Apple’s native email client.
How to add an HTML email signature in Apple Mail – the easy way
[UPDATE]: We’ve updated our free email signature generator with a dedicated option for Apple Mail. There’s no longer any need to browse through the file system or paste HTML code directly into text files. You’re welcome.
To set up a professional email signature in Apple Mail, follow this short instruction:
- Before you begin, a word of warning. If possible, don’t use the email signature generator with the Safari browser. I don’t want to point fingers, but this browser has the tendency of adding unnecessary formatting to signatures. So, unless you want to give a slight Picasso vibe with an abstract signature formatting, use another browser, or proceed at your own risk.
- Go to the signature generator, choose Apple Mail and follow the intuitive interface to create your own email signature. When in doubt, you can always refer to the user’s manual. When the email signature preview on the right looks great, click Apply your signature.
- Next, Copy your signature to the clipboard.
- Start Apple Mail.
- Then, go to Mail > Preferences > Signatures.
- Before you proceed with anything else, switch from All signatures to your email account (1), add a new email signature with the + button (2) and uncheck the Always match my default message font option (3). If you don’t do it, the signature probably won’t turn out right. Next, paste the signature you have copied earlier (4) and (optionally) select it as the default one (5). Note that the signature won’t look right in the Apple Mail’s editor at this point – don’t worry about that.
- When you compose a new email, the signature should be there with all the formatting and images displayed correctly (even if they were missing in the signature editor).
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Now you have a professional email signature in your Apple Mail client. But what if you want everyone in your company to get a similar signature? You could rinse and repeat the whole procedure for everyone, but it might take you ages to complete such a task. Especially, if some users use more than one email client. That’s why I saved the best method for last.
Organization-wide email signature management (the easiest way)
If your company uses Microsoft 365 or Exchange Server as the email platform, you can manage email signatures for everyone, the smart way. No matter what email clients are used, no matter how many users there are, you can deploy signatures to everyone in a matter of minutes. Whether it’s Apple Mail, Outlook for iOS, or any other client used on any other device, email signature management tools let you provide instant updates to the signatures in your company.
- CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 – the #1 email signature solution for Microsoft 365 tenants. With this flexible web-based email signature service, you can manage your Microsoft 365 signatures easily from any device. It can be integrated with web analytics tools, CSAT survey tools and meeting scheduling solutions, and it is the first among competition to use the newest technologies to help you manage your branding effectively.
- CodeTwo Exchange Rules – the best signature solution if you use Exchange Server. It lets you change a simple email signature into an effective marketing channel.
And if you want to do much more than just manage email signatures, it includes a Pro variant which gives you full control over your mail flow.
I really appreciate this but when I paste this into Apple Mail I get the text and none of the images. I’m on Ventura 13.5 and I created everything in Google Chrome. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Have you finished setting up the signature and tested it in a message? It’s normal for the Mail App not to display the images.
If the images aren’t displayed in an email, does it apply to all the images, including social media icons, or only logo / banner?
Does not work. I have tried to make a link for the logo on dropbox and google drive. Doesnt show
Did you make sure to use a direct link to your logo instead of a shareable link? This article shows exactly how to upload an image and get its direct link.
You can also send the image’s URL you have been using in a message to us at https://www.mail-signatures.com/contact/ and we’ll help you get it to work.
I appreciate your commitment, but I have a problem. I use this signature template and it works fine in “Day mode”. In Dark mode, its’ background color is white, all message. What can I do to fix it?
Just tested it and it works in dark mode as well. Make sure you’ve unchecked the Always match my default message font option, as shown in step 6.
What are the steps for doing this on an iphone or ipad? I tried the steps above (which didn’t exactly match), but it only shows the html code or the signature the same way it was copied. It didn’t look like the nice preview that is on the web. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Nicole,
To get some tips on how to best use our email signatures with iOS devices, consult this article.
Hi there,
I’d really like some help, I followed the instructions for Apple mail and made sure to use Google chrome instead of Safari (this is what I always use anyway). I made a png logo in canva with all of the information that I want in my signature so when I was filling out one of your templates, I left all of the other information blank. I added my png signature photo as a banner so it would make it the correct size. I created an image link from Google drive and followed all of the instructions for that as well and everything was looking good in your creator. I was ready to proceed and and paste the created html link into my email signature box, which I did. Upon pasting it, it created a blank space with “Stay green – don’t print this e-mail!” I thought that maybe it just looked blank but would appear when I actually drafted and sent an email. I created a test email and sent it to myself, and my image does not show up on the desktop version of my Apple mail, nor does it show up on my iPhone, all I see is a big space followed by “Stay green – don’t print this e-mail!”
Hi Alissa,
Sounds very strange. Could you copy the signature from the generator and paste it in a message to us at https://www.mail-signatures.com/contact/ ? We’ll see what’s wrong.
Thank you so much for your article and signature generator, it has been big help. I’ve had success with all steps, including adding the signature to my Apple Mail. However, when I send an email, the signature is formatted differently to how I created it in the generator. Rather than the image being on the left, text on the right, and social media links with the text, it now is in more of a list view (image above text, above social media links). Is there any way to fix the formatting? Thank you
Hi Anjelica,
I didn’t come across such behavior. Could you please let me know which signature template you used? I will try to replicate this on my end.
Seems the copy feature at the end doesn’t work in the latest version of Safari. Does anyone else have this issue?
It is a known issue with Safari. You can easily fix it by opening the free email signature generator in, for example, Google Chrome.
hi, managed to do everything but the image doesn’t show, shows on the preview but in the email it just shows as an empty box, any ideas?
Hi Jennifer,
Most problems with images are caused by using shareable links, instead of direct URLs. This article shows how to upload an image for mail signature needs and get the right kind of link.
Another possible reason is that an image cannot be hotlinked, because of server’s settings.
Those are two most probable reasons, both of which should be easy to fix by following the steps from the article I linked to.
Thank you very much. I was trying my best to do this. In the web interface, I can see the signature properly. When copy and paste it in the signature box, the images are missing, including the FB, Twitter etc. I have followed all the steps properly several times. I did create “direct line” and permission were properly set.
Have you tried to apply the signature anyway? The signature settings’ preview often shows broken images, even if they are all working in the actual email. If that’s not it, there’s always a setting which blocks remote content, which breaks all hosted images.
Hi I am trying to do this on the iPhone mail app but it doesn’t work. Safari copies nothing when you click copy. Probably better to show the code somewhere too?
Hi Joseph,
Despite our efforts, Safari just doesn’t want to cooperate with the generator. It’s easiest to just use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
If you want to see the HTML code of a signature, simply switch the platform to Thunderbird, then, instead of copying the parsed signature to the clipboard, you can see the HTML code.
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I’m ready to give up. I’ve spent a half a work day trying every which way I know to get my signature working in Apple Mail but it’s simply not happening. I can view my logo (although for some reason it appears squished vertically?) and social media links in your preview space, (and all links work there by the way) but when I paste the new signature into Mail signatures the logo disappears and is left with a blank box saying “Logo” in it, and the social media links are all blank boxes. Then the kicker: when I type up a new email and try to add in the new signature, it’s completely blank.
I don’t know what else to do.
Make sure you’ve added the signature to your account and not to “All signatures” only. (check the screenshot under the point 6). Provided you’ve followed all the steps, the signature should appear allright, even if the preview is messed up.
The problem is, one of the Apple Mail updates started blocking some of the images and there doesn’t seem to be any solution to make them work.
nothing works for Apple mail!
Hi Brandon,
What do you mean by that? If you are unable to copy the signature template from the generator, do a hard refresh of the web page (Ctrl+F5 in Windows or Opt + Cmd + E in Mac) and try again. This should do the trick. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Hello,
I followed all of the instructions but can’t paste into the Signature box . Is there anything wrong ? Thank you
Hello Jason,
We had a bug that prevented the signature from being copied to the clipboard. It should work now. Sorry for that!
Hello,
I cannot see the picture in the apple mail.
It only says (photo with a ?)
I am almost sure that my link is correct
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=13w4nRtleVOsZ9vMIb7Dr5Wjzz4b7vilt
When I click on “show signature preview” I can see the photo but not on the Apple mail.
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
Thank you for your help.
Regards,
Daniel
Hello Daniel
There’s nothing wrong with the link. For some time now, Apple Mail blocks some of the images from being displayed. You can try using some of the other image hosting services and see if the image from them is blocked as well.
Great tool. I’m a little mystified by one thing though. When I click the ‘copy’ to clip board button and then paste the code in an HTML editor, then copy it back and paste it into the signature window it only pasts the raw code and not the formatted result. Any idea what might be happening here?
If you are copying the signature’s code to an HTML editor, and try to paste the resulting code to the signature window, this is the expected outcome.
Before pasting the signature into signature settings, you need to save the HTML code in the HTML format, open it in a browser and the signature from there.
This article explains the process in more detail.
There are multiple possible reasons for this:
My signature keeps getting reformatted in signature box, even with the “Always match my default message font” box off.
The signature will be reformatted and will suffer from issues in the signature editor. But if you uncheck the font matching option, it should look fine in an actual email.
Hello,
I have just spent hours/days trying to fix my problem using every single trick, advice, on this page and others to no avail. I created a signature with your services, on Mac Mail, with logo and banner images linked to my hosting service. When I send an email, anyone receiving/reading the mail on their computer can see both images fine, anyone receiving/reading the email on iPhone (I do not know how it appears on any other smart phone) is not seeing the logo and banner. The place holders appear with the name of the place holder in it but no picture. If I answer from my phone back, then I receive the answer with the logo and banner on my computer but still not on my phone. Clearly it is a phone related issue, but which one and how to fix it? Have you solved this issue yet?
Hi Isabelle,
It sounds like a permission issue with your images. Could you share the image URLs you’ve used?
Alternatively, you can take a look at the article about direct image links for guidance.
great stuff! signature looks great, but i have a problem with the lower banner not showing on a sent email. but when they reply, the banner shows up again. i followed your instructions but so far i have not been able to solve it. what can i do to fix this?
Only banner or all graphics? I’d check if you’ve used a direct image URL and if the permissions are set to “anyone in the Internet can view”. Check this article for reference.