use an iCloud+ «hide my email» apple ID forward address as an alias to send mail

Question

Hide my email is the neat feature introduced by apple earlier, and since then I have been trying to figure out how I can use those forward addresses as sender address when composing emails on the iPhone.

The adressess don’t appear when tapping on current sender address when composing an email in apple mail.

I figured I should try to add one of the «hide my email» forward addresses manually in appleid.apple.com as an alias, but the process of adding an alias stop at waiting for a verification code from the appleid service.

The use of «hide my email» if I can’t send or reply an email is limited to signing up for newsletters.

Any insight on this?

edit: also in the browser icloud.com/Mail behind the gear icon you can add up to 3 aliases, but the rule «Alias names may only contain unaccented letters, numbers, periods, and underscores.» disqualify the generated «hide my email» addresses as they typically contain a - sign

2nd edit: I did some further digging and found a related feature in a recent team up between 1password and fastmail called "masked email" and integration. Fastmail supposedly provide the ability to send from the randomly generated addresses.

3rd edit: an extra feature with icloud+ is custom domain as icloud email. you will need to update DNS records at your domain registrar/host with TXT, SPF, MX servers, and DKIM to point to icloud. This feature do allow for use of more addresses pointing to the same mailbox, and new addresses are fairly simple to create and delete, but they will not be random like those "hide my email" generate as you will have to manage them yourself, and they all point to your own custom domain anyway

4th edit: don’t know why I didn’t notice this feature before, but apparently «Hide my email» feature seamless reply to email, only not a send from option when composing email.

also the custom domain feature with icloud+ appear to have an issue with DKIM signing email sent from an iphone mail app. For some reason sending from the browser version of icloud mail sign sent mail with DKIM.

Answer 1

This doesn’t appear to be the design intent of the service. Apple is setting up inbound only aliases so that multiple mailboxes funnel mails to one account, not setting up multiple accounts or aliases to send out mail.

Apple iCloud isn’t currently the service for masking outgoing mails or handling multiple accounts, so you can’t configure your way around this limitation by client side configuration changes.

Check out https://www.fastmail.com/ - I’ve used them in tandem with Apple mail for almost a decade and couldn’t be happier with the value both provide me. Each vendor does things I like, with Fastmail being more customizable and having some extra features Apple doesn’t offer.

Answer 2

A little late to the party and I’m not trying to supply an answer but it seems this is my only option…

Bmike above commented (I just joined to comment but apparently need points to comment which is pretty much a useless loop…) that:

The short answer is no, Apple didn’t design this to let you send mail from a private address.

Oh but it does! When I’m composing an email from my iPhone, using the default Mail app, I CAN select the From: field and choose “Hide my email” at which point Apple will create a NEW masked/alias address to send that particular email from! So indeed Apple IS providing this service (which will then come from an icloud address negating the other comment thread about spammers) only you can’t select an [Apple created] hidden email created previously to sign up with a service/site you intend to use going forward! In this case I’m attempting to email the site’s support but need it to come from the email address I registered with. Doesn’t make sense whatsoever. I realize this isn’t a coding question/comment but felt this needed to be raised in response to the assertions made above.