Practical Tech Tip: How to change your mobile email signature

By Kim Komando

February 11, 2020

© Hanohiki | Dreamstime

You have work to get done, but you’re also running from one errand to another today. So, you do the sensible thing: you reply to emails from your phone.

When you finally get back to a desktop computer, you discover those emails you sent have that pesky “Sent from my iPhone” message at the bottom and it looks unprofessional. Tap or click here to see what today’s email etiquette looks like.

It’s better to have a clean email signature, one that denotes your name, position and the ways to reach you, rather than a simple auto-generated message. Tap or click here to learn how to unsend unprofessional or bad emails in Gmail.

It’s time to change your signature, but you’re not sure how. Thankfully, it’s a pretty simple process and we’re here to help. Let’s start with changing that message from “Sent from my phone” to something you can proudly display.

Change your Gmail mobile signature

Gmail makes it pretty easy to add or delete a signature within the app. To remove your mobile signature on Gmail:

1. Tap the left menu icon (three lines stacked on top of each other next to the search bar) and tap on Settings.
2. Select the account you want to change.
3. Under the General heading, tap on Signature settings.
4. Turn off the Mobile Signature switch if you want no mobile signature at all.
5. To reword the signature, keep the switch on, and edit in the text box below it.

Edit or remove your Yahoo Mobile signature

Yahoo Mobile also doesn’t want to overly complicate adding or removing a signature for you. To reach the signature for removal or editing:

1. Click the Gear icon from the menu on the left to open Settings.
2. Tap Signature.
3. From here, just edit Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone to whatever you want it to be.
4. Turn the Customize for each account switch to off to disable the mobile signature.
5. To edit the signature, leave the Customize switch on and tap on the text beneath the account name of whichever signature you want to edit.

Alter your on-the-go Outlook signature

Microsoft Outlook is a great email service, with very eager spam blockers. Tap here to make sure your favorite newsletters aren’t kept out of your inbox by Outlook’s filters. Its smartphone and tablet app versions are called Outlook Mobile.

To alter the signature in Outlook Mobile:

1. Tap the gear icon in the top left part of the screen to get to Settings.
2. Under the Mail heading, click on Signature. You can edit here, then tap the < on the top left corner to save your changes.
3. To delete the signature, delete all the text under the blue Signature heading. Tap the checkmark icon in the top right to verify this change.

Change the signature for the worst offender here: Mail

The Mail app comes built-in on iPhones and iPads. Like Outlook, it’s an app that lets you check different email accounts all in one place. It’s also the one that defaults mobile signatures to “Sent from my iPhone.”

Email accounts on Mail don’t all have to be from the same service. And, conveniently, you can alter signatures in Mail all at once — or, you can alter them per account if you’d prefer. To alter email signatures in Mail with iOS 13:

1. Open the Settings app, and tap on Mail.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the screen, and under the Composing heading, tap on Signature.
3. Tap All Accounts if you want to have the same email signature for all accounts you keep in Mail, or to delete all mobile signatures sent there.
4. Tap Per Account if you want to alter the email signature of each of your accounts individually.
5. To remove the mobile signature entirely in all or each of your accounts, delete all the text present in the signature text box(es), and tap the left Mail arrow to save the change.
6. To alter the signature, type in new text in the text box provided. Tap the Mail arrow on the top left when you’re done to save the change.
   • To add formatting like bold, italics and underlining, tap and hold on a word or phrase you want to format, then tap the BIU option that comes up on the menu tab.
   • Images can also be copied and pasted into your signature if you want them.

Find your respective email app in the list above, and alter the mobile signature there today. Your messages will be better received in the future, which is worth the extra effort.

Tags: Apple iPhone, Email etiquette, email service, Gmail, newsletters, Outlook, smartphones, tablet, Yahoo