For years, I just assumed it was a fact of life that every time I responded to an email, my signature (and everyone else’s, too) would get added to the message.
Ordinarily, you don’t actually see them. But for whatever reason, it seems that Office 365 / Outlook users don’t have the correct settings and Gmail doesn’t know to hide all of the nonsense, so you see the massive pyramid of signatures stacked on top of each other at the end of the message.
In an effort to combat that, I’ve made my signature as small as possible.
But as it turns out, I don’t have to!
That’s because somewhat recently, Gmail has released a feature that allows you to specify whether you want to add your signature to replies and forwards or not.
This feature allows you to display your signature on your first email, and never after that.
The only downside is that it won’t display for any replies. So for instance, if a new contact emails you and you respond to that email, they will not see your signature, even for the first response.
It’s still worth it, in my opinion.
How to disable your signature on reply emails
- In Gmail, click the gear icon and then “See all settings”.
- Scroll down to the signature section and find the part that says “Signature defaults”.
- Select the email address for which you wish to change your signature settings in the top dropdown.
- Leave “For new emails use” as the signature you wish to display on new emails.
- For “On reply/forward use”, select “No signature”.
That’s it! You’re done.
From now on, your signature won’t stack on replies.
I think we can all agree that email is a terrible technology that should have been supplanted years ago, but I’m here to at least make it a little bit better with features like this.
Now if only Gmail would support IMAP instead of the antiquated POP3…
Happy emailing!
