How to turn off Hide My Email on your iPhone

If you have an iCloud+® subscription, you can use the Hide My Email feature to protect your privacy while sharing your contact information with third parties. You also have the option to turn that feature off at any time. Learn how to turn off Hide My Email with a few simple steps.

At Asurion, we’re here to help you get more out of your devices with tutorials and advice for all of your tech care needs. Here's what you need to know about how Hide My Email works and how you can customize settings.

How Hide My Email works

Hide My Email is a feature available to iCloud+ subscribers that generates random email addresses that forward to your real inbox. That way, you don’t need to share your actual email address with third parties, but you can still receive messages from them as needed.

For example, say you’re buying something online and the seller requires your email address. With Hide My Email, you can generate a random email address to use in the checkout process that forwards any messages from the seller to your actual email address. You’ll still get the messages in your inbox without sharing your real personal email.

The purpose of Hide My Email is to help you take control of your inbox and protect your privacy when you’re doing things like:

• Signing up for newsletters
• Joining new apps
• Filling out purchase forms that require email addresses

If you create a random address in your Apple privacy tools, you can copy it to use elsewhere, like Outlook on your phone. Or, you can generate the email addresses in the Mail app in iOS 18® or Safari®.

By default, if you subscribe to iCloud+, Hide My Email shows up as a prompt when you’re filling out forms on your iPhone® that require an email address. You don’t have to use the randomly generated email address, though, and you also have the option to disable this feature entirely.

Keep in mind that disabling Hide My Email won't affect your Apple ID® or iCloud®. However, once you disable the feature, any random email addresses you already created will stop forwarding messages to your inbox.

Turn off Hide My Email in iCloud Settings

To turn off Hide My Email on an iPhone or iPad®, follow these steps for managing Hide My Email addresses:

1. Go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud to access the iCloud Hide My Email options.
2. Select Hide My Email.
3. Find the email address you want to deactivate in the list under Create New Address and select it.
4. Choose Deactivate.

Follow these steps for all the email addresses that you want to stop using for Hide My Email forwarding. Disabling Hide My Email iCloud addresses is not permanent. You can reactivate any of these email addresses later if you want to start using them again for email privacy.

Manage or delete existing Hide My Email addresses

Another option is to delete Hide My Email addresses entirely with these steps:

1. Go to iCloud.com/icloudplus.
2. Sign in to your Apple Account to view your Apple privacy settings and select Hide My Email management.
3. Choose the email address alias that you no longer want to use.
4. Select Deactivate email address and follow the remaining on-screen instructions.

If you delete a Hide My Email address, it is gone permanently. The address will stop forwarding messages to your inbox, and you won't be able to reactivate it. To stop using Hide My Email entirely, you can delete all the email addresses you have already generated and avoid creating new ones.

If you change your mind, you can always create new aliases later with iCloud+, as long as you still subscribe to the service.

Hide My Email also offers email forwarding control, allowing you to adjust the inbox that your aliases forward to. For example, you can set up one alias to forward to your personal email and another alias to forward to your work email, if you prefer. Adjust the settings in the Settings app of your iPhone or other Apple device.

Similarly, in Settings, you can change other settings related to your email. For example, if you’ve noticed that your text messages appear to be sent from your email address rather than your phone number, don’t worry. It’s a quick fix to stop your iPhone from emailing text messages.