I set my signature in Gmail on the web; why doesn't it appear when I send from the Gmail phone app?
Because the signature you saved in Gmail in the browser is not necessarily the one the phone app uses; the app usually takes its signature from a setting of its own. Open your account settings inside the app, find the signature option, and paste in the plain-text version the tool prepares for you.
Two signatures, two places
A common pattern: you set the signature once on the laptop, then answer customers from your phone all day, and half your replies go out with no name and no number. Mail apps on phones generally keep their own settings, and the signature box there may know nothing about the browser one. Menu names differ between versions and between Android and iPhone, so do not rely on a remembered path: open the settings inside the app, pick your account, and look for 'signature'.
When you find the box, try pasting into it. Some of these boxes only take plain text and drop colours and formatted links, which is exactly what the plain-text version is for.
Get the plain-text version from the tool
- Open the Email signature builder and fill in the same details you used for the desktop signature, or choose Both languages if you deal with Arabic and English speaking clients.
- Scroll to the 'Plain-text version' panel. It holds the same signature with no formatting, one detail per line.
- Press 'Copy plain text', then open the app on your phone and paste it into the signature box.
This is what the tool actually produces for a two-language signature for Sara Alotaibi, Sales Manager at Al Waha, in Tahoma, with a phone and an email:
- Line: سارة العتيبي
- Line: مديرة المبيعات - الواحة
- A blank line, then: Sara Alotaibi
- Line: Sales Manager - Al Waha
- A blank line, then: +966 50 123 4567
- Line: sara@example.com
Title and company share one line joined by a plain hyphen, and the number and email come last after a blank line. Any app can show these lines, and a customer can copy the number, or tap it if their app turns numbers into links.
Getting the text onto your phone
If the tool is open on your computer, press 'Download text file' to get email-signature.txt, send it to yourself, open it on the phone and copy its contents. Or open the tool straight in your phone's browser and fill in the fields there; it runs in the browser with no sign-up.
If your app does keep formatting, you can try 'Copy as rich text' from the phone's browser. The plain-text version is still the safer choice, because it depends neither on clipboard support nor on how the app draws colours.
Common questions
Does setting the phone signature change the web one?
Usually not; they are separate settings. Check each one where it lives and send a test email from each device.
Why is the logo missing from the plain-text version?
Plain text cannot carry images. The text version carries name, title, phones, email and links only.