How to Add an iPhone Email Signature That Actually Keeps Its Formatting
You paste a beautiful signature into iPhone Settings and it comes out with wrong fonts, lost colors, and broken images. iOS does that to everyone. Here's the exact sequence that keeps the formatting.
Step by step
Know what iOS does on paste
The Signature field re-applies its own text attributes to whatever you paste — fonts reset, sizes drift, colors flatten. Separately, pasted images get rewritten to dead internal references. Two different problems, two different fixes.
Get the signature onto the phone the right way
Never copy it out of a received email (that's what breaks the images). Copy clean HTML with hosted images — Autograph's Set up iPhone QR page does exactly this with one Copy button (full guide).
Paste into the Signature field
Settings → Apps → Mail → Signature (iOS 17 and earlier: Settings → Mail). Delete what's there first — remnants of the old signature contaminate the formatting.
The shake: Undo Change Attributes
Immediately after pasting, physically shake the iPhone. Tap “Undo Change Attributes” in the dialog — this reverts iOS's re-styling and restores the pasted formatting. This is a real, Apple-built feature, odd as it feels.
If shaking does nothing
Enable it: Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Shake to Undo → on. (On some versions a three-finger swipe left also triggers Undo.)
Don't re-edit the field afterwards
Any typing inside the signature field re-applies iOS's attributes to the edited region. If you need a change, fix it at the source and re-paste rather than editing in place.
Judge it by a sent email, not the preview
The field and compose window show remote images as broken squares and can look dark-on-dark in Dark Mode — normal. Send a test to Gmail; that's the truth.
Formatting that survives the paste
Autograph's Set up iPhone flow copies clean HTML with hosted images — scan the QR, tap Copy, paste, shake once. Same signature as your Mac, formatting intact.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
Why does my signature format break again later?
Someone edited the field (see step 6), or an iOS update reset attributes. Re-paste from the source — with a QR flow it's a 30-second redo.
Shake to Undo shows only 'Undo Paste' — where's 'Undo Change Attributes'?
'Undo Paste' removes everything. 'Undo Change Attributes' appears when iOS actually altered styles on paste; if it doesn't appear, the paste may already be clean — check a sent test before doing anything.
Can I have different signatures per account on iPhone?
Yes — Settings → Apps → Mail → Signature → Per Account. Each account gets its own field (and needs its own paste).