Install guide: Gmail
Add an animated signature in Gmail.
Gmail on the web takes an animated signature with everything intact: photo, logo, colours, links and banner. Here is where it goes, the setting people miss, and what the Gmail app on a phone can and cannot hold.
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The short answer
How do you add an animated signature in Gmail?
In Gmail on the web, open Settings, choose See all settings, and on the General tab scroll down to Signature. Create a new signature, paste the one you copied, set it as the default for new emails and for replies, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. The Gmail app on a phone keeps a plain-text signature only, so set it up on the web.
Step by step
Six steps, two minutes.
Two minutes in Gmail's settings, and every message you send carries it.
Copy your signature
In Animated Signature, press Copy signature. It goes onto your clipboard as formatted content, images, colours and layout included, rather than as code.
Open Gmail's settings
In Gmail, click the gear icon at the top right, then See all settings. You land on the General tab, which is where signatures live.
Find the Signature section
Scroll a long way down the General tab. If you have never made one, click Create new, give it a name only you will see, and press Create.
Paste it in
Click inside the signature editing box and press Cmd+V (Mac) or Ctrl+V (Windows). The whole signature appears. If you see raw code instead, you pasted into the wrong field.
Make it the default
Just below the box, under Signature defaults, choose your signature for both For new emails use and On reply/forward use. Skipping this is the most common reason a signature never shows up.
Save changes
Scroll to the very bottom of the page and click Save Changes. Gmail discards everything you just did if you navigate away without it.
On your phone
The Gmail app keeps plain text only.
The Gmail app can't hold a formatted signature, but there is a way round it.
Why this can't be done in the app
Gmail's signature setting stores plain text only. Pasting a signature into it keeps the words and throws away the photo, the logo, the colours and the links. There is no setting that changes this.
Set it on desktop first
Follow the desktop steps on a computer. Mail you send from Gmail on the web will carry the full signature.
Or send from the web on your phone
Open the web version of your mail in your phone's browser rather than the app. The web version uses the same signature you installed on desktop, formatting intact.
What recipients see
Sent from Gmail, read anywhere.
You send from Gmail; the people you write to read in whatever they use.
Gmail and Apple Mail
Play the animation, on the desktop and on the phone.
Current Outlook
Plays it, unless animation effects are switched off in Windows.
Older Outlook
Shows the first frame, which is the finished picture, so the signature is still whole.
Images blocked
The text, links and banner stay readable, because they are real text rather than pictures.
Questions
Gmail questions
Why does my signature appear under the quoted text in replies?
That is a Gmail setting. Under the signature box, tick Insert signature before quoted text in replies, and Gmail puts it straight after your reply instead of at the bottom of the thread. The same setting removes the two dashes Gmail otherwise adds above it.
Can I use a different signature for new emails and replies?
Yes. Under Signature defaults, For new emails use and On reply/forward use are separate choices. Many people keep the full signature for new emails and a shorter one for replies.
I pasted it and see code instead of a signature. What happened?
The signature was pasted into a field that takes plain text. Click inside Gmail's signature editing box itself, the large area under the signature's name, and paste again.
Does it work with a Google Workspace account?
Yes, the steps are the same for each person. What is not offered yet is setting one signature centrally for a whole Workspace domain; that is part of Teams, on our roadmap.