Gmail signature generator

Adding the signature to Gmail, step by step

1. Press Copy signature above. Use that button rather than Copy HTML — Copy signature puts the formatted version on the clipboard, Copy HTML puts the source code on it, and Gmail will paste source code as literal text.
2. Open Gmail in a desktop browser. The signature editor does not exist in the mobile apps.
3. Click the gear icon at the top right, then See all settings. The short pop-out panel does not include signatures.
4. Stay on the General tab and scroll down to Signature. Click Create new, give it a name — that name is only ever visible to you — and confirm.
5. Click inside the empty signature box and paste with Ctrl+V, or Cmd+V on a Mac. The table, the coloured rule and the links all arrive intact.
6. Underneath the box, set For new emails use and On reply/forward use to the signature you just created. A signature that exists but is not assigned to anything will never appear.
7. Scroll to the very bottom of the settings page and press Save Changes. This is the step people miss; the signature box behaves as though it saved on its own, and it has not.

Why pasting rich text works here

Gmail's signature box is a contenteditable region, so pasting reads the text/html flavour off your clipboard rather than the plain-text one. Copy signature deliberately writes both flavours at once: Gmail takes the HTML, and anything that cannot handle HTML takes the text.

Gmail then sanitises what it received. It discards <style> blocks, scripts and anything referencing an external stylesheet, and it can rewrite class names. What it leaves alone is inline style attributes on table elements — which is precisely all this generator produces. That is why a signature pasted from a word processor often arrives with its spacing destroyed while this one does not: the word processor's formatting lived in a stylesheet that Gmail threw away.

The 10,000-character limit

Gmail refuses to save a signature longer than 10,000 characters and shows an error when you press Save Changes. The signatures produced here run to roughly 1,500–2,000 characters, so you have plenty of room left. The usual cause of hitting the ceiling is an embedded image: a logo encoded as base64 becomes tens of thousands of characters of text, and Gmail strips such images anyway. If you are migrating from another generator and cannot save, that is almost certainly what is in your clipboard.

Insert signature before quoted text

Directly under the signature editor is a checkbox labelled "Insert this signature before quoted text in replies and remove the '--' line that precedes it." Left unticked, every reply you send buries your signature at the very bottom of the whole quoted thread, preceded by two dashes. Ticked, the signature sits immediately under what you actually wrote, where a reader will see it. Tick it. The only reason not to is if your organisation relies on the two-dash convention for automated trimming, which is rare outside mailing lists.

The Gmail app on your phone is separate

The Gmail apps for Android and iOS do not use the signature you set on the web. They have their own setting — Settings, then the account, then Mobile Signature — and it is plain text only. There is no way to put a table or a colour into it. Mail sent from your phone will therefore carry a different, simpler sign-off, which is worth keeping short and consistent: your name, your role, and one phone number is enough. Setting the mobile signature to nothing at all is also a defensible choice, since Gmail no longer appends "Sent from my phone" unless you ask it to.

Questions people ask

Why did my signature paste in as plain text?

Three usual causes. You pressed Copy HTML rather than Copy signature, so what reached the clipboard was source code. You pasted with Ctrl+Shift+V, which forces an unformatted paste. Or your compose window is in plain text mode — check the three-dot menu at the bottom right of a compose window, and untick Plain text mode. Note that plain text mode is remembered for future messages, so one accidental click keeps affecting everything you send afterwards.

Can I use a different signature for each of my addresses?

Yes. If you have added other addresses under Accounts and Import as "send mail as", a dropdown appears at the top of the Signature section letting you pick which address you are editing defaults for. Each address can have its own default for new mail and for replies. Build one signature here per address and paste each into the right slot — the whole form takes half a minute to refill.

Gmail added a footer I did not write. Where is it from?

Google Workspace administrators can append an organisation-wide footer to outgoing mail at the server, after your own signature. You cannot remove it from inside Gmail, and it is applied after sending, so you will not see it in your Sent copy in some configurations. If it duplicates your contact details, trim your own signature down rather than fighting it — two addresses stacked on top of each other looks worse than one.

Why do my links look purple after I send the message?

Some clients apply their own visited-link colouring, and Gmail's dark theme adjusts link colours for contrast. The generator writes an explicit colour on every anchor, which stops most of it, but no signature can override a reader's client entirely. If a link colour matters to you, pick an accent with reasonable contrast against both white and dark grey rather than a pale tint that only works on white.

Does the preview here show exactly what Gmail will show?

Very nearly. The preview uses the same markup Gmail receives, rendered by your browser rather than by Gmail. What can differ is the surrounding context: Gmail applies its own base font size to the compose area, and a reply nests your signature inside a quoted block with a left border and its own colour. Send yourself a test message and read it on the devices your recipients actually use — that is the only check that counts.