Looks like the “Hide my email in apps” feature won’t be ready when iOS 16 launches.

Apple removed mentions of the new Hide My Email in Apps feature, suggesting it might not be ready for iOS 16 this fall.

• What is happening? Apple has removed the “Hide My Email in Apps”feature from its macOS preview web page, indicating that this advanced email privacy protection may not be ready for macOS Ventura’s launch this fall.
• Why care? With it, you can hide your personal email address in third party applications. Previously, this only worked in Apple’s Safari and Mail apps.
• What to do? There’s nothing you can do about it other than hope that Apple has shelved the feature instead of postponing it indefinitely.

Hiding my email in apps may have been delayed

As reported by French website MacGeneration on August 12, 2022, this feature was removed from the macOS Ventura Preview web page at some point after August 4. Apple’s description of the Hide My Email feature in apps reads: “Hide My Email is integrated directly into QuickType. keyboard hints so you can keep your personal email address private in third party apps.”

As of this writing, the “Hide My Email in Apps”feature is still present in the Apple iOS 16 Preview and iPadOS 16 Preview web pages. If Apple removes this feature from these pages, we will be sure to let you know. For now, it looks like hiding your email in third-party apps on iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 is still on schedule.

If you have iCloud+, which is required for Hide My Email, you need to keep your fingers crossed for Hide My Email in Apps to launch whenever it’s ready. If Apple concluded that this feature needed a little more time to perfect, then it was probably too flawed to include it in the initial releases of iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura. Read: How to stop email tracking in Gmail and Apple Mail

How does the “Hide my email”feature in apps work?

The Hide My Email feature was first introduced on iPhone, iPad, and Mac with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey in 2021. In doing so, you can create unique email addresses that are automatically forwarded to your personal mailbox.

In terms of privacy, it allows you to sign up for any service that requires an email address to register, but without revealing your real email address. You can directly reply to emails sent to these randomly generated addresses.

On iOS/iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, the system automatically prompts you to create a unique address when you select an email field in Safari. This also works in the Mail app (tap the FROM field) and when using the Sign in with Apple feature.

You can even create these unique email addresses that will be forwarded to your personal inbox using the iCloud.com web page and the Settings app on iOS/iPadOS and System Preferences on macOS. For more information about the Hide My Email feature, check out the Apple Support document.

With iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura, Apple wants people to be able to use Hide My Email in third-party apps. No action is required on the part of the developer to support this feature. Instead, it “just works”.

All you have to do is select the email field in a third-party app, like a webpage in Safari, and you’ll see a QuickType keyboard prompt to use Hide My Email to improve privacy.

How do I become an iCloud+ subscriber?

As mentioned earlier, you can’t use Hide My Email if you don’t have an iCloud+ subscription. But what is iCloud+ and how do I sign up for it? It’s just a fancy marketing name for good old iCloud storage upgrades.

So a subscription to the most affordable iCloud storage plane, which costs 99 cents a month for fifty gigabytes of storage, makes you an iCloud+ subscriber, which gives you access to Hide My Email and other subscriber-only features like custom email domains.

Visit the Apple website for full details on iCloud+ storage plans and pricing.

Hide My Mail is included with iCloud+ storage plans starting at $0.99 per month in the US. This feature is also available when you create an account in Safari using the Sign in with Apple feature. In the Mail app in macOS Monterey version 12.1 and later, Hide My Mail can be found in the pop-up menu in the From field.