How to Change Your Signature in Gmail (Desktop & Mobile)

Your Gmail signature is one of the first things recipients notice — and one of the easiest things to overlook when it's outdated or missing entirely. Whether you're updating a job title, adding a phone number, or starting fresh, Gmail gives you several ways to manage signatures across devices. Here's exactly how it works.

What a Gmail Signature Actually Is

A Gmail signature is a block of text (and optionally images or links) that automatically appends to the bottom of outgoing emails. It can include your name, title, contact info, a logo, or even a legal disclaimer. Gmail supports multiple signatures per account, which means you can maintain different signatures for different contexts — professional replies, new emails, or specific roles.

Signatures in Gmail are stored per account and per device type. That's an important detail: the signature you set up in Gmail on your desktop browser is separate from what's configured in the Gmail mobile app. Changing one doesn't automatically update the other.

How to Change Your Signature in Gmail on Desktop

Gmail's desktop interface (accessed via browser at mail.google.com) offers the most complete signature editor.

Steps:

1. Open Gmail and click the gear icon (⚙️) in the top-right corner
2. Select "See all settings"
3. Stay on the General tab
4. Scroll down to the "Signature" section
5. Select the signature you want to edit from the list, or click "Create new" to add one
6. Edit the text in the rich-text editor — you can change fonts, add links, insert images, and adjust formatting
7. Under "Signature defaults", choose which signature appears on new emails and which appears on replies/forwards (these can be different)
8. Scroll to the bottom and click "Save Changes"

The rich-text editor supports basic HTML-style formatting, meaning you can bold text, add hyperlinks, and embed images. However, complex HTML signatures (with custom layouts or advanced styling) sometimes require pasting pre-built HTML directly — Gmail's built-in editor doesn't support raw HTML input natively through the standard interface.

How to Change Your Signature in Gmail on Mobile (iOS & Android)

The Gmail mobile app has a signature feature, but it's simpler and separate from the desktop version.

Steps:

1. Open the Gmail app
2. Tap the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top-left
3. Scroll down and tap "Settings"
4. Select the email account you want to update
5. Tap "Mobile Signature"
6. Edit or replace the text, then tap "OK" or "Save"

Mobile signatures in Gmail are plain text only — no formatting, no images, no hyperlinks. If your desktop signature includes a logo or styled layout, that won't carry over to mobile. The mobile signature is a separate, text-only field.

Managing Multiple Signatures

Gmail allows you to create and store multiple named signatures under a single account (desktop only). This is useful if you send emails in different professional capacities or want a shorter signature for replies versus a fuller one for new outreach.

To switch between signatures within a specific email on desktop, click inside the body of a compose window, then select the pen icon at the bottom of the toolbar. This lets you manually override the default and insert any saved signature on a per-email basis.

Variables That Affect How Your Signature Behaves ✉️

Even after you've set everything up correctly, a few factors influence how your signature actually appears to recipients:

• Email client on the receiving end — some clients strip or reformat HTML, so a styled signature may display differently for recipients using Outlook, Apple Mail, or older clients
• Plain text mode — if you or a recipient sends/receives email in plain text mode, HTML formatting in signatures won't render
• Image hosting — signature images in Gmail are typically uploaded directly, but externally hosted images may be blocked by recipients' email security filters
• Google Workspace vs. free Gmail — Google Workspace accounts managed by an organization may have admin-level signature policies that override or append to individual signatures
• Browser vs. app session — changes saved on desktop won't sync to mobile, and vice versa

When Signature Changes Don't Seem to Save

If your signature update isn't appearing, a few common causes are worth checking:

• You edited the signature text but didn't scroll down to click "Save Changes" — Gmail requires this explicitly
• The signature is saved but not assigned as the default for new emails or replies in the Signature Defaults section
• You're composing from the mobile app, which has its own separate signature setting
• A Google Workspace admin policy is overriding your individual settings

How you configure signatures also depends on how frequently you switch between devices, whether you use Gmail through a third-party client like Apple Mail or Outlook (which have their own signature settings independent of Gmail), and whether your email needs are personal, professional, or somewhere in between. The right setup looks different depending on all of that.