Hide My Email is a great privacy feature that disguises your real email from apps and sites. Here’s how to use it!
Apple’s iCloud Plus subscription service is a great add-on for users who operate in Apple’s hardware and software ecosystem. iCloud Plus is an extension of the free iCloud account Apple offers to all users.
If you subscribe to iCloud Plus, you get more iCloud storage, the ability to use a custom email domain, HomeKit Secure Video storage, and access to iCloud Private Relay. But iCloud Plus also gives you another terrific benefit: access to Hide My Email.
In this guide we’ll walk you through what Hide My Email is and how to set it up and use it on iPhone. It should be noted that Hide My Email also works on Macs and iPads, but this guide will focus on setting it up and using it on iPhones running iOS 16.4 or later as that is the primary device most Apple users use.
What Is Hide My Email?
Hide My Email is a feature of the iCloud Plus subscription service. As the name suggests, the Hide My Email feature hides your real iCloud email from apps and websites – and even individual correspondents.
But how does Hide My Email hide your real email address?
It’s pretty brilliant: Hide My Email sets up an alternate email address that you can use when registering for an app, website, or service – or that you can even use when filling out online forms or sending emails to someone else.
Emails sent to these alternate email addresses will forward to your real iCloud email, but when you reply to them, the reply will come from the alternate email address.
The aim behind Hide My Email is to make it harder for apps, websites, and other services to abuse knowing your real email address. Because Hide My Email allows you to create a new email address for every app, website, service, and person you communicate with, it’s much harder for companies to track you around the web using your email address.
But there’s another advantage of Hide My Email. If an entity abuses your Hide My Email-supplied email address – such as adding it to mailing lists you get spam from – you can simply deactivate or delete the Hide My Email email address and you will no longer get spammed.
Hide My Email is kind of similar to Sign in with Apple, Apple’s single sign-on service. Sign in with Apple allows you to choose to hide your real email address when signing up for an app or service. The advantage of Hide My Email is the website or app doesn’t have to support Sign in with Apple. With Hide My Email, you can create an anonymized email address for any occasion.
Hide My Email: Requirements
To use Hide My Email on iPhone you’ll need the following:
- An iPhone running iOS 15 or later.
- You must be signed into your iCloud account on that iPhone.
- Your iCloud account must also be subscribed to iCloud Plus.
If you’ve got all that you’re ready to use Hide My Email. There are a few ways you can use it…
Hide My Email: Create A Hide My Email Email Address To Use Anywhere
You can manually create Hide My Email email addresses to use on website forms, etc. Here’s how:
- Open the Settings app on iPhone.
- Tap your iCloud name at the top of the Setting app.
- Tap iCloud.
- Tap Hide My Email.
- On the Hide My Email screen, tap “Create New Address”.
- On the next screen, you will see the Hide My Email address. If you don’t like it, tap Use Different Address to be offered a new one.
- Label your Hide My Email address if you want to (such as “for baking mailing list”).
- You can also add a note so you remember what the address is to be used for.
- Tap Next.
- On the next screen, tap Done.
Your new Hide My Email is now created!
Hide My Email: Create A Hide My Email Email Address In The Mail App
You can also create a Hide My Email directly in the iOS Mail app. Here’s how:
- Open the Mail app.
- Tap the New Message button.
- In the New Message window, tap the From field.
- Now tap the “Hide My Email” button that appears to generate a new Hide My Email address.
Hide My Email: Create A Hide My Email Email Address In The Safari App
Hide My Email creation also works in the Safari browser on iPhone. Here’s how:
- Tap the email field on a website that has an email form.
- Tap the “Hide My Email” button above the keyboard to generate a new Hide My Email address.
And that’s how you use Hide My Email on iPhone!
