How do I change the “From” name that other people see when I send messages from Apple Mail?
When you send other people a message in Apple Mail, they see it as being “From” your name, such as “George Washington” or “Joan of Arc”. You can change the name other people see.
On this page:
- Changing the name in macOS “Sierra” (2016) and later
- Changing the name in Mac OS X “El Capitan” (2015) and earlier
- How can I tell if it’s working?
Changing the name in macOS “Sierra” (2016) and later
Click the Mail menu at the top of the screen and choose Accounts. This will open a window that looks like this:
Then change the “Name” to whatever you want other people to see.
Changing the name in Mac OS X “El Capitan” (2015) and earlier
Click the Mail menu at the top of the screen and choose Preferences. This will open a window that looks like this:
Then change the “Full Name” to whatever you want other people to see.
How can I tell if it’s working?
Note that you can’t reliably test this by sending yourself a message, because if your email address is in your own address book, your own mail program will probably show the address book name instead of the “name” from the message.
To test this properly, send a test message to a computer that doesn’t have your name in its address book, and look at what it says there. You can use a service like ThrowAwayMail.com for this; just send a message to the unique address they give you and see what’s shown in the “From” column.
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