By Dan Moren

March 28, 2016 12:18 PM PT

Quick Tip: Adding an email alias on OS X El Capitan

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Reader Brian Hogg asked on Twitter last week whether I knew a technique for adding email aliases on El Capitan. I’ve previously detailed instructions for earlier versions of OS X, but El Capitan changes this feature slightly–surprisingly by making it mostly easier.

There’s an Apple tech note on the process, but here’s the quick explanation.

Open up Mail > Preferences and select Accounts. Under Account Information you’ll see a dropdown menu labeled Alias. Select Edit Aliases from that and you’ll get a window that lets you add additional email addresses: just click the Plus (+) button at the bottom, and enter a full name and email address.

That address will now show up as an option in the From dropdown menu when you send a new message.

Here’s the one caveat: Though this seems to work for Gmail, Exchange, and generic IMAP accounts, iCloud email users are out of luck. Selecting Edit Aliases there will kick you to iCloud’s web interface, which only lets you define aliases at icloud.com, no matter if you use @mac.com or @me.com for your primary email address. More’s the pity.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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