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The complete 2026 walkthrough for Gmail on desktop and mobile — plus the one-click alternative that skips all of it.
Gmail's editor accepts rich content but strips some formatting on paste; images hosted on slow or blocked servers show as broken icons. Three rules: use inline-styled HTML built for email, host images on a reliable HTTPS host, and never paste from Word. Or skip the whole dance: ProSignature puts the signature into every Gmail compose via a no-permission Chrome extension — no pasting, formatting guaranteed.
Gmail buries signatures further down its settings page than most people expect, which is why the first search for them so often fails. From Gmail on the web, click the gear icon at the top right, then See all settings — not the quick-settings panel that opens first, which does not contain signatures. On the General tab, scroll a long way down to the Signature section and click Create new. Name it something you will recognise if you later have several. Then — and this is the step people miss — scroll to the very bottom of the page and click Save Changes. Gmail's General tab saves only at the foot of the page, so closing the tab after editing discards everything you just did.
Directly beneath the editor Gmail shows Signature defaults: two dropdowns, one for new emails and one for replies/forwards. They are independent, and leaving the second on “No signature” is the single most common reason someone believes their signature stopped working — it appears on new mail and vanishes inside every thread. There is also a checkbox to insert the signature before quoted text, which keeps long threads readable. And if you send from more than one address, note the account selector above the editor: each send-as address holds its own signature, so setting one leaves the others untouched.
If the design arrives mangled, the cause is nearly always the clipboard rather than the design. Installing directly into Gmail's settings through Google's API avoids the paste step entirely — that is what our one-click install does, and there are examples of what survives Gmail on the Gmail examples page. Our free Chrome extension goes a step further: it now adds the signature to every Gmail compose window automatically, with no Google permission at all.
The Gmail mobile app does not use the signature you just created. It keeps its own mobile signature (menu › Settings › your account), it is plain text only, and it overrides the rich web signature on anything sent from the phone. That is why colleagues sometimes see a beautiful signature from your laptop and a bare line from your phone. There is no way to push the rich signature into the app's own field, so the practical choices are a short plain mobile line, or clearing it. Full detail on both surfaces is in changing your Gmail signature.
You did not scroll to Save Changes at the bottom of the General tab.
The replies dropdown is set separately — change it too.
They must be hosted over HTTPS and publicly reachable. Causes and fixes: broken signature images.
Gmail strips style blocks; only inline styles survive a paste.
Check the send-as account selector — each address has its own.
Test in Outlook too; it renders via Word's engine. See the Outlook guide.
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Finding the box is the easy half. Most people then sit in front of an empty field, so here is the whole answer: six lines, and nothing else. Every line below earns its place because a recipient uses it. Anything not on this list — a second mobile, a fax number, a postal address, an inspirational quote, a 'please consider the environment' line — costs attention and returns nothing.
Regulated trades add one more line — a licence or registration number. Which ones must is listed in legal requirements.
Paste this into the Gmail signature box and type over it. It is deliberately plain text, so it survives the paste intact and you can style it with Gmail's own toolbar afterwards.
Want it to look like the examples rather than plain text — with your logo, brand colours and a proper button? Build it in the free generator: it renders as you type, needs no account, and produces email-safe HTML you can paste straight into this same box.
If you would rather never leave the settings box, Gmail's signature editor has a small toolbar underneath it that does more than people realise:
Then scroll to the bottom of the settings page and click Save Changes. Gmail's General tab saves only at the foot of the page, so closing the tab discards everything you just did — the single most common reason a new signature vanishes.
Not sure Gmail is where you need this? The general guide to creating an email signature covers what to put in it and then points at the right steps for whichever app you send from.
Design a branded signature and install it into Gmail automatically — free.
Create my signature — freeIn Settings → General → Signature defaults, there are two dropdowns — one for new emails, one for replies/forwards. Set both.
Gmail needs the image hosted on a public HTTPS URL; attachments and local files break. Use hosted images, or a generator that handles hosting.
Yes — each 'Send mail as' address in Gmail can have its own signature in the same Signature settings section.
Yes — ProSignature installs the finished signature into Gmail in one click using Google's official API, with your logo, colors and links intact.
Open Gmail's Settings (gear) → See all settings → General, scroll to Signature and click Create new. Then add six lines: your name, job title and company, one phone number, your email, your website, and one call-to-action. Set the defaults for new mail and replies, and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
Name, job title and company, one phone number, your email address, your website, and at most one call-to-action such as a booking link. Six lines. Skip second phone numbers, postal addresses and inspirational quotes — they cost attention and nobody uses them.
Yes — a Gmail signature can be made entirely in Gmail's own editor, which handles text, an image, links, fonts and colours. The limits are that images must be sized before upload and that layout control is minimal. For a logo, columns or a real button, build it in a generator that outputs email-safe HTML and paste that in instead.