Signing off

No phrase sends me into a fit of envy quite like the one you see on the left — “Sent from my iPhone.” Anyone who’s bought a phone — or who’s received an e-mail from the aforementioned lucky so-and-sos — will recognize that as the default signature that appears on the tail-end of every e-mail sent from the phone. “Ha ha,” the signature seems to say. “I got mine, while you, most assuredly, do not.” Or perhaps I’m just feeling extra sensitive/covetous.

There are perfectly good reasons for affixing such a signature to your iPhone-based correspondence — chief among them is the subtle clue it gives recipients as to why your response may be on the terse side. I don’t care how good the predictive typing is or how adept you are at two-thumb typing: nobody wants to pound out the Epistle to the Galatians one letter at a time on the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard.

Nevertheless, if you want to change your default Mail signature, you can do so. Just Tap the Settings icon, followed by a tap of the Mail icon on the Settings screen. The signature setting is all the way at the bottom under the Sending header. Tap on Signature and you’ll see an onscreen keyboard with your default signature. You can either add on to what’s already there or just hit clear to zap “Sent from my iPhone” into nothingness.

There’s no distinct way to save changes to your signature file. Just tap on the backward arrow labeled “Mail,” and that will do the trick.

As you may already know, that one signature goes out on every e-mail, regardless of what account you’re sending it from, so make sure whatever signature you do wind up using is appropriate for every account.