Writing mail: formats and signatures
Drafts save themselves
What you write is kept in Drafts as you go: two seconds after you stop typing, at least every 15 seconds while you write, and at once when you switch to another tab or app, close the window or start another message. The time of the last save shows next to Save draft. If an address is not valid, the draft waits to be saved and says which address to fix; closing the page with unsaved changes asks first. Open the draft from Drafts to carry on, on any device.
Formats
Pick how to write each message from the menu next to Save draft:
- Rich text (the default): a toolbar for bold, italic, underline, strike-through, headings, quotes, bulleted and numbered lists and links. Keyboard shortcuts work too (Ctrl+B or ⌘B, and so on).
- Plain text: just text, sent as plain text only.
- Markdown: write
**bold**,*italic*,# Heading,- list,1. list,> quote,code,[text](https://…)and fenced code blocks. Preview shows how it will look. The message goes out as formatted HTML, with your Markdown as the plain-text copy. - HTML source: write the HTML yourself, with Preview to check it.
Rich text, Markdown and HTML messages are sent with a plain-text copy, so mail apps that cannot show HTML still show the message.
Switching format converts what you have written. Going from rich text or HTML to plain text or Markdown removes the formatting, and webmail asks first.
To choose the format new messages start in, open Settings, then Writing. That choice is kept in your browser.
What you can paste
Pasted text keeps simple formatting: bold, italic, lists, quotes, headings and links. Colours, fonts, images, tables and anything that could run code are taken out. To send a picture, attach it.
Sender names and signatures
Settings → Writing → Names and signatures has three parts.
Your addresses lists each of your addresses (your own and any aliases), with:
- Sender name: the name people see next to your address.
- Default signature: the one new messages, replies and forwards from this address start with, or none.
Signatures is your collection: keep as many as you like (up to 50), such as Work, Personal and Short. Each has a name and:
- Plain-text signature: used for plain-text and Markdown messages, below a line with
--, which most mail apps recognise. - Formatted signature: used for rich-text and HTML messages. Leave it empty to use the plain-text one.
For some people gives some people or domains a signature of their own, or none at all. Enter an address (carol@example.com) or a domain (example.com, which also covers its subdomains such as mail.example.com). An address wins over its domain.
Which signature a message gets
- Webmail looks at the To and then the Cc recipients in order. The first with a rule (its address, or its domain) decides.
- Otherwise the From address's default is used.
The signature goes above any quoted text and changes as you add recipients or change From. To choose one yourself, use the Signature menu next to Templates while writing: pick a signature, No signature, or Signature: automatic to go back to the rules. Once you pick one, it stays until you change it.
Where they are kept
Signatures belong to your account, so they follow you to any browser. JMAP mail apps (through Identity/get and Identity/set) see each address's default signature. If a mail app changes the signature itself, that address keeps the mail app's version and no longer follows a default from your collection until you choose one again.
In a mailbox someone shares with you, Names and signatures shows that mailbox's own sender name and signature for each address instead; your collection and rules are for your own mailbox.
Deleting a signature takes it off any address that used it as its default (those addresses then have none) and removes its rules.
Limits
A sender name is one line of up to 200 characters. A plain-text signature can have up to 4,000 characters and a formatted one up to 20,000. A signature's name is one line of up to 254 characters. You can keep up to 50 signatures and 500 rules for people and domains.