Apple Removes 'Hide My Email' Support in Third-Party Apps From macOS Ventura Features Page

[polyphenol]

Have enjoyed and used this feature a lot since it came out

My one wish would be to have the option of less "random" emails as I like using them when emailing companies or signing up for things where I need to have my real name, but not email. Makes it weird giving/memorizing such random emails but I guess that is the point of it

My own personal emails are all towards the random end of the scale. Few contain any part of my natural name and absolutely none contain two parts. So the Apple approach is not that different for me.

Many years ago, I went through a phase of creating email addresses for each company. Hence would have produced macrumors@<mydomain> for this site. Rather neatly that identified how any email addresses might have been passed on. But it lets people know too much because <mydomain>was too informative (e.g. Whois records).

 

[joecomo]

So the service isn't going away, just the new feature of being able to access it via a 3rd party app isn't being introduced... yeah?

HME is a fantastic service and worth subbing to Icloud+ just for that.

Ok that makes sense now and this is bad.
Would have loved if 1Password would be enabled to use this feature.

 

[joecomo]

My own personal emails are all towards the random end of the scale. Few contain any part of my natural name and absolutely none contain two parts. So the Apple approach is not that different for me.

Many years ago, I went through a phase of creating email addresses for each company. Hence would have produced macrumors@<mydomain> for this site. Rather neatly that identified how any email addresses might have been passed on. But it lets people know too much because <mydomain>was too informative (e.g. Whois records).

Same with me - was using the Catch-All for that. But to really protect your personal account, one would need a separate domain for crap-Email.

Now with the catch-all still in use - no way ever to migrate to »use your own domain » with iCloud Email …

 

[Starv20]

Further proof that Apple software is going down the *******. I recently switched from Safari which was slow, buggy, needed to reload pages every 5 minutes, lagged when closing tabs etc .... to Chrome, which is fast as hell with all the extensions. I don't mind trading off some privacy for software that actually allows me to WORK.

Shame, because I still love Apple hardware, but the software man, it's getting soooo bad.

 

[polyphenol]

Further proof that Apple software is going down the *******. I recently switched from Safari which was slow, buggy, needed to reload pages every 5 minutes, lagged when closing tabs etc .... to Chrome, which is fast as hell with all the extensions. I don't mind trading off some privacy for software that actually allows me to WORK.

Shame, because I still love Apple hardware, but the software man, it's getting soooo bad.

I mostly use Firefox but also Safari as my second-string - and rarely have any issues which are not clearly due to the website/servers. (I'm pretty confident of this as the sites which I find problematical are frequently reported by other users who will be using a wide variety of platforms.)

 

[1557750]

Further proof that Apple software is going down the *******. I recently switched from Safari which was slow, buggy, needed to reload pages every 5 minutes, lagged when closing tabs etc .... to Chrome, which is fast as hell with all the extensions. I don't mind trading off some privacy for software that actually allows me to WORK.

Shame, because I still love Apple hardware, but the software man, it's getting soooo bad.

Deleted

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Trademark infringement in that country?

Sounds likely.

It really must be tough naming products for a global company like Apple without infringing on something already out somewhere in the World.

 

[MajorFubar]

Have to admit I've never used the feature. I have a private email address, and a burner email address. I assumed most people had the same. I've had the burner over 25 years. (It can receive sometimes up to 200 spam emails a week.)

 

[joecomo]

For what it's worth, iOS 16's preview page still lists it as a feature in 3rd party iOS apps:

iOS 18

iOS 18 makes iPhone even more personal, with deeper customization, new ways to connect, easier-to-find photos, and support for Apple Intelligence.

www.apple.com

View attachment 2042054

These are great features - seems they finally get to implement a catch-all - good-stuff

 

[snowatom]

don't work anyway. I have a bunch of emails ending with @privaterelay.appleid.com, most providers has blocked the domain both in and out.

If I choose to let the function forward to my iCloud.com email, and if I send an email from my iCloud email to a @privaterelay.appleid.com it works.

But sending from anything else, ex. Google Gmail, it fails at does not work. There are many posts on this, so that could be why Apple is shutting it down.

Many have lost purchases and information due to tracking of packages, as the email don't forward as supposed to.

 

[orbital~debris]

Well, there’s a hack you can use. Pick one of the easier one’s that’s listed in your Hide My Email list. Use that, but the only problem is you may end up wanting to terminate it and perhaps miss something you wanted.

It would be great if you could generate a Hide My Email email address on demand and note where you’re using it for and have that ability. That would be a better solution than what I am doing.

What I love most about it is easily being able to go see who sold my information. Makes me want to not do business with them again.

I use 1Password and it saves the "Hide My Email" address and PW so I can see what service it is used with. The challenge is you hav to know the email if you want to search for it separately, or ad a HMY tag to the name or comment feild to be able to search for al HMY addresses.

Well I am confused - it wasn’t really a feature auf MacOS to begin with and the integration into MacOS was
abysmal. You won’t lose much by going directly onto the cloud website.

However having this nicely integrated into the OS to comfortably use it on external apps would indeed be nice.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what the above posts are talking about, Hide My Email is accessible from macOS System Preferences via the Apple ID section.

There's a searchable database, a list of site/app names (along with the associated email addresses), as well as a '+' button to create a new email address on demand.

Seems well integrated to me…

 

[ThailandToo]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what the above posts are talking about, Hide My Email is accessible from macOS System Preferences via the Apple ID section.

There's a searchable database, a list of site/app names (along with the associated email addresses), as well as a '+' button to create a new email address on demand.

Seems well integrated to me…

I guess I never scrolled down to figure that out. Thanks for pointing it out. Cheers.

 

[orbital~debris]

I guess I never scrolled down to figure that out. Thanks for pointing it out. Cheers.

You're welcome! Glad I was able to be of some help 😊

 

[joecomo]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what the above posts are talking about, Hide My Email is accessible from macOS System Preferences via the Apple ID section.

There's a searchable database, a list of site/app names (along with the associated email addresses), as well as a '+' button to create a new email address on demand.

Seems well integrated to me…

For me real integration would mean, that in whatever „Enter Email“-Field (be it on the web, be it in an application). You could generate a custom email address on the fly

 

[Mr. Heckles]

This is a great idea. I signed up for the FastMail version since I have 1Password. It’s nice to create a new alias email on the fly from my Linux computer.

 

[wood1208]

No surprise M2 MBA is a runaway success. I commented here the day M2 MBA was announced that it will be GOTO laptop for many and hope Apple's supply chain is ready to handle.

 

[dsgjax]

I think this feature should be receiving and replying only. It should not be allowed to send out new emails.

What would be the point then? If you can't send from the hidden email then your own personal email is the sender.

 

[smoking monkey]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what the above posts are talking about, Hide My Email is accessible from macOS System Preferences via the Apple ID section.

There's a searchable database, a list of site/app names (along with the associated email addresses), as well as a '+' button to create a new email address on demand.

Seems well integrated to me…

That's exactly how I use it and it's awesome. I feel like it's one of the best services Apple has introduced.

Sure it would be nice to have it integrated into 3rd party apps to work automatically, but opening sys prefs, creating an email and then copy and pasting it into the app/web page takes less than one minute.

 

[orbital~debris]

That's exactly how I use it and it's awesome. I feel like it's one of the best services Apple has introduced.

Sure it would be nice to have it integrated into 3rd party apps to work automatically, but opening sys prefs, creating an email and then copy and pasting it into the app/web page takes less than one minute.

It is indeed awesome!

Apple even provide a 'Copy address' button…

 

[Seanm87]

It’s a beta. It was probably temporarily removed due to some bug. It’ll be back. Stop panicking.

 

[nwcs]

It is a great feature but they need to let you send email from the address used.

 

[o9p0]

Many years ago, I went through a phase of creating email addresses for each company. Hence would have produced macrumors@<mydomain> for this site. Rather neatly that identified how any email addresses might have been passed on. But it lets people know too much because <mydomain>was too informative (e.g. Whois records).

Back in the day I did the same and it was great, even if I had to login to my mail server and add the aliases each time. It would have been great to have an at-the-ready, well-integrated interface from browser to email client to third-party app to help track and manage it. But it still worked great.

Private relay might be the closest thing to the ideal state.

I switched to using Google Suite as my email back-end, which was worth it for the spam control, reliability, and access, but only get 30 aliases per account. So it became untenable to keep up the aliases. And I now just use one alias for everything.

What are you doing now, if I may ask?

 

[polyphenol]

Back in the day I did the same and it was great, even if I had to login to my mail server and add the aliases each time. It would have been great to have an at-the-ready, well-integrated interface from browser to email client to third-party app to help track and manage it. But it still worked great.

Private relay might be the closest thing to the ideal state.

I switched to using Google Suite as my email back-end, which was worth it for the spam control, reliability, and access, but only get 30 aliases per account. So it became untenable to keep up the aliases. And I now just use one alias for everything.

What are you doing now, if I may ask?

I use HME addresses for new sign-ups (when feasible) and still have quite a number of individual addresses set up!

I usually use Outlook for email on desktop or laptop (many years of using it, through numerous iterations, makes me reluctant to move). But end up having to use something else for HME - I use Mail on MacOS - as I already did on IOS and iPadOS.

It's not a big deal as I don't do many sign-ups.

 

[o9p0]

I’m a little confused.

First off, the article is just saying a piece of text was removed from a web page.

Second, what does it mean if the feature is actually being removed? Isn’t the entirety of private relay and hide-my-email functionality essentially a mechanism for, specifically, obfuscating emails in third-party apps? Would it mean somehow that only Apple apps and accounts would be able to be obfuscated?

I don’t understand what removal of the feature would imply compared to the functionality we have today.

 

[polyphenol]

I’m a little confused.

First off, the article is just saying a piece of text was removed from a web page.

Second, what does it mean if the feature is actually being removed? Isn’t the entirety of private relay and hide-my-email functionality essentially a mechanism for, specifically, obfuscating emails in third-party apps? Would it mean somehow that only Apple apps and accounts would be able to be obfuscated?

I don’t understand what removal of the feature would imply compared to the functionality we have today.

Until a few days ago, I had always created a new address for HME before signing up. Some site or other I went to then supported me creating another hidden address as I signed up. Without having to go to System Preferences, Apple Id, etc.

Can't remember which site!

But I assumed that it was this added convenience that was being removed?