How to Specify the Default Account in Mac Mail

Use any of your email addresses in Mac Mail

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by Heinz Tschabitscher
An independent writer who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated September 26, 2018

Mac Mail can be configured to send and receive email from all your other email accounts in addition to your Mac Mail account. You might have a Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook email account delivering your mail to those addresses to your Mac Mail app. When it comes time to reply to one of them, you most likely want to use the email address the sender used to contact you. Mac Mail makes it easy to send a message from a different email account. Just click in the From field of any new message and choose the email address you want for the email from the drop-down menu.

If you use one of these accounts more often than the account suggested by Mac Mail as the default, make the account you use most often to send messages the new default.

Specify the Default Account in Mac OS X Mail

Your Mac Mail account probably has one of your Apple email addresses listed as the default. To specify a default email account in Mac Mail:

  1. Select Mail | Preferences... from the Mail menu bar.

  2. Click the Composing tab.

  3. Select the desired account from the drop-down menu next to Send new messages from, or else select Automatically select best account to have OS X Mail choose the account based on the open folder. For example, if you have your Gmail inbox open when you start a new message, the Gmail address and account is used as the default for sending.

  4. Close the preferences window to save your changes.