Home › Signature in Apple Mail (Mac)
Apple Mail signatures are easy — until you want your logo and formatting to survive. Here's the full path, traps included.
Apple Mail displays pasted images, but the safest signatures reference hosted HTTPS images (your logo served from the web) rather than embedded files — recipients on Outlook and Gmail then see exactly what you see. Signatures built in ProSignature use hosted assets and inline styles for this reason.
In Apple Mail on macOS, signatures are under Mail › Settings (called Preferences on older macOS versions) › the Signatures tab. The window has three columns: your accounts on the left, the signatures for the selected account in the middle, and the editor on the right. A signature must be created while the correct account is selected — or dragged onto that account afterwards — or it will not be offered when composing from that address.
Beneath the editor sits the setting that causes most Apple Mail signature complaints: “Always match my default message font”. With it ticked, Apple Mail strips your signature's fonts, sizes and colours and renders everything in the composing font — so a carefully branded signature arrives as flat, uniform text. Unticking it is the fix, and it is the first thing to check when a pasted signature looks wrong.
Dragging a local file embeds it, which can arrive as an attachment. A hosted, correctly sized image is more reliable — see the image size guide.
Apple Mail signatures live on the Mac. They travel between your own devices only if iCloud Drive syncing covers Mail, and they never travel to a colleague's machine.
A signature created with the wrong account selected simply will not appear for the address you wanted.
The dropdown at the foot of the Signatures pane sets which signature is used automatically for each address.
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Design a branded signature and install it into Gmail automatically — free.
Create my signature — freeThe 'Always match my default message font' checkbox overrides your design — untick it in the Signatures tab.
Embedded images are attached files. Use a signature whose images load from a hosted HTTPS URL instead.
Only via iCloud accounts, and imperfectly. Set the iPhone signature separately, or manage the signature at the provider level (e.g., Gmail settings).
Yes — each account in the Signatures tab holds its own list; drag signatures between accounts to share them.