How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC

An email signature is a great way to add personalization or a sense of professionalism to your email correspondence!

Whether it’s a business sign-off with your logo, a fun little ending message for your recipients, or even just a simple “Thanks” to save you some time when you write your emails, a signature can really improve your email correspondence skills.

So, how do we set up an email signature on a Mac or Windows PC? Let’s get straight into it!

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC For Every Email App

We’re going to work through all of the mainstream email apps in this article, for both operating systems.

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC: Gmail

Gmail is a browser-based app, so this will also work for other operating systems (such as most Linux distributions):

1. Open Gmail in your web browser

2. You will see a cog/gear icon in the top right corner, next to a 3×3 grid of dots and near your profile picture.

3. Click on this cog, and then click on “See all settings”. It may take a little while for the Settings screen to appear.

4. You’ll see a screen with multiple tabs of settings available. The “General” tab should be selected by default – if it isn’t, select it.

5. Scroll down until you find “Signature”.  Click “Create New” if you want to create a new signature. Alternatively, you can proceed to editing your signature immediately if you already have one set up.

6. There will be a text box that you can enter your signature into. You can put text or images in this box- it’s up to you!

Gmail allows you to put up to 10,000 characters in your email signature, so you have plenty of room to play around with.

7. This last step is very important: Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and click “Save Changes”.  If you don’t do this, your lovely email signature won’t stick around!

Gmail also allows its users to add multiple signatures, which can be used for different kinds of email or manually switched between before an email is sent.

To add another signature, all you have to do is follow the above steps as usual. You’ll see that in the “Signature” field of the settings form there is a “Signature Defaults” sub-heading.

You can choose which of your signatures to use when forwarding or replying to an email, and which to use when sending a completely new email.

By default, if you have one signature, this one signature will be used for both cases. However, you also do have the option to choose “No signature”.

In order to manually switch your signature while writing a specific email, you’ll want to go ahead and start writing an email as usual by clicking “Compose”.

At the bottom of the email composition window there are several icons, one of which looks like a pen.

If you click on the pen, it will allow you to switch between any of your signatures– as well as a no signature option.

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac: Apple Mail

This will only work on a Mac, as it requires the Mac’s Mail app! 

If you’re trying to use a different Apple device such as an iPad or iPhone, the process will likely be different:

1. Open up the Mail app on your Mac.

2. In the top window bar, you should see a bolded “Mail” option.  Click on this and select “Settings”, then “Signatures”.  If this doesn’t work, try “Mail” > “Preferences”, then “Signatures”.

3. Select the email account where you want to use the signature from the column on the left.

By default, a category called “All Signatures” will likely be selected. Signatures created when this is selected are not automatically applied to your emails.

You’ll have to drag them to the account you want to use them with in order to have them show up.

4. Click the Add button (“+”).

5. Type a name for the signature in the middle column. This won’t be shown in your emails, but will help you to keep track of your signatures if you have multiple.

6. In the right-hand column, enter whatever you would like for your signature. Your signature can include text and images.
   
   You can also format and edit your text and images within the right-hand column, which is also called the Preview Window.

7. Once you’re done crafting your signature, you should see a few checkboxes and menus available to you underneath the main sections:
   
   1. “Always match my default message font” will make your email signature always match the font and size you use by default in your emails.
      
      You may want to disable this, particularly if you are working with a custom signature that includes many fonts.

2. “Place signature above quoted text” will make your email signature appear above the text that is from an email you have replied to or forwarded.

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC: Outlook 365

Similar to Gmail, Outlook 365 can be used as a web-based application. So, if you’re using it in this capacity, the instructions for the web form should work on any PC operating system:

Outlook 365 – Web

1. Open your web browser and navigate to your Outlook 365 account.

2. In the top right of your web browser you should see a cog icon. Click on it!

3. A Settings panel will pop out on the right-hand side of your browser. In the “Search Outlook settings” field, type in “Signature”.

4. Then, click on “Email signature”.
   
5. Click “New Signature”, then use the text box to create your new signature.
   
6. Again, you can choose to have your signature change depending on whether you send a new email or if you’re replying to or forwarding another email.
   
7. After you’ve made some edits, a bar at the bottom of the settings window should appear with a “Save” button.  Make sure to click this once you’re done with your signature!

Outlook 365 – App

1. Open your Outlook application.
   
2. Create a new email message.
   
3. In the taskbar at the top of the screen there should be a “Message” option.  Click this, then “Signature” -> ”Signatures”.
   
4. Now click “New”. You’ll be prompted to enter a name for your new signature.
   
5. Once you’ve done that, you can go ahead and enter your email signature into the main text box in the menu.
   
   Just like the other platforms we’ve looked at in this article, you can add in images, links, and any formatted text you would like.
   
6. In the top right of your screen, you should see three fields – “E-mail account”, “New messages”, and “Replies/forwards”.
   
   E-mail account means the account with which you will be associating your signature preferences. If you have multiple email accounts signed in, make sure you select the one you want.
   
   Under “New Messages”, you should see the option to add any of the signatures that you’ve set up in your application, as well as the option to choose none.
   
   Similarly to the other platforms we’ve looked at, you can also make a decision on what signature (if any) you want to add to replies or forwards using the “Replies/forwards” drop-down menu.
   
7. The signature should save automatically, so go ahead and close the window.  If you now create a new email, your signature should show up at the bottom (assuming you selected it in the “New messages” drop-down!).

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC: Outlook Outlook Older Versions

The instructions for Office 365 should be fairly consistent for the full Outlook version as well – they work for Outlook versions from 2013 to 2021.

However, if you’re using an old version of outlook (2007 or 2010), the process is a bit different:

1. Open your Outlook app, and then open a new message.
   
2. On the “Message” tab, find the “Include” group.
   
3. You should see a “Signature” option.  Click this, then click “Signatures”.
   
4. This will open up an “email signature” tab.  Click New and follow the prompt to enter a name.
   
5. You should now be able to enter your email signature as you want to.  When you’re done, click “OK” to save the signature.

We’re not quite done! This has created and saved the signature, but at the moment it will only appear in an email if you add it manually.

To make it appear automatically, you need to do one more set of steps:

1. As before, navigate “Message” -> “Include” -> “Signature” -> “Signatures”.
   
2. You should see an option to “Choose Default Signature”. Select the email account that you’d like to add a signature to.
   
3. Now, the process is fairly standard; select what signature you’d like to apply to new messages, and to replies/forwards.
   

To insert a signature manually, you want to create your new email, then navigate to the “Signature” option and select the signature you’d like to use.

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC: Spark

1. Open up the Spark app.  Click “Spark” in the top left corner of the screen.
   
2. Click “Preferences”, then “Signatures”.
   
3. Make sure “Enable Signatures” is ticked.
   
4. On the bottom left, there will be a “+” symbol.  Click on it! You can then enter the text of your signature in the field on the right.
   
   Spark supports HTML signatures, meaning that you can design and modify your signature with a significant degree of freedom.
   
   If you are using an HTML signature, make sure you click HTML at the top right before pasting in the code.
   
   You can also directly create in the text field, although you may need to update your Spark application if you want to change the font you’re using. You need at least version 2.3.4 to do this.
   
5. Select one of the accounts that you are signed in on in the “Default for…” section at the bottom. This will make the signature the default for that email address.

How To Add An Email Signature On Your Mac or Windows PC: Shortwave

Shortwave is essentially a reskin of Gmail, in that it interfaces directly with your Gmail account.  So, it’s not too different in terms of email signature.

If you want to change or modify the list of email signatures that you use, you’ll need to do this in the Gmail client directly. We’ve provided instructions for this above!

To include a signature in your emails, there is a small scribble-like marking next to the paper-clip icon in your composition window.

This is the signature toggle– clicking it will allow you to include or remove a signature from a particular message.

The Bottom Line

Email signatures are a great look for your correspondence, whether it’s personal or professional. Plus, they just tend to be able to save you a lot of time!

Hopefully you’ve now got yourself an awesome signature set up for your email. If you’re stuck on what to include in your signature, go ahead and look up some examples online. There are even several email signature generators you can use.

You’ve arrived at the fun part: Go get creative with those signatures!

Sources:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-add-a-signature-to-messages-8ee5d4f4-68fd-464a-a1c1-0e1c80bb27f2

https://www.shortwave.com/docs/references/faq/migrating-from-gmail/