The Apple ID account system is inflexible and rigid. When you’ve created an account with an Apple-controlled handle at me.com or mac.com within the outdated days or icloud.com over the past a number of years, you may’t change it. (It’s trivial to vary in the event you use a third-party e mail handle.)

What occurs in the event you change your identify by way of marriage, desire, or different causes? Or are uninterested in (or embarrassed by) an handle you might need named in your youth and desire a extra sedate incoming mail label? Apple helps you to create aliases. (I first wrote about this in 2019, and the steps have modified with Apple’s relaunch of iCloud.com final 12 months.)

As an alternative of abandoning your Apple ID, you may add a brand new handle and make some adjustments at iCloud.com and together with your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and different e mail shoppers to start out utilizing that new handle. You may as well obtain and ship emails from a number of aliases, too.

• Time to finish: 5 minutes
• Instruments required: Apple ID login
• Supplies required: iCloud account

1.

iCloud.com login

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2.

Mail login

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Click on the grid icon within the upper-right nook and click on Mail.

3.

iCloud Mail Preferences

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Click on the gear icon on the prime of the left-hand sidebar above the Mailboxes label after which select Preferences.

4.

iCloud Mail accounts

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5.

Add Mail Alias

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1. Click on “Add an alias” (you may add as much as three complete).
2. Choose a reputation for the alias, assign a full identify that exhibits in messages despatched, and label it if that’s helpful.
3. Click on Add. iCloud.com will let you know if an e mail handle is already in use and thus unavailable. In that case, you’ll must create a brand new identify. If it’s obtainable, it would seem in your account.

The right way to use an alias as your default handle

Apple exhibits aliases as in the event that they solely work because the account identify plus @icloud.com. Nevertheless, with my account–which dates to the Pleistocene period, or at the least the dotMac and MobileMe days–I used to be capable of additionally use @mac.com and @me.com with the identical account identify. You may see which of them work together with your account within the subsequent step—every area is proven as a separate popup possibility for a default handle.

To make use of this new handle as your default return:

• At iCloud.com, go to gear icon > Preferences > Composing and select the alias underneath “Set default handle.”
• In iOS/iPadOS, you may’t set a default From aside from the first iCloud account identify. When composing a message in Mail, faucet the From discipline, then press and maintain to pick out your most well-liked From handle.
• In macOS, go to the Mail app and select Mail > Preferences > Accounts > iCloud. From the Electronic mail Deal with popup discipline you may choose any iCloud alias.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a query submitted by Macworld reader Whitney.

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