How to See Bcc Recipients of Your Emails in Mac OS X Mail

When you send somebody a Bcc of an email using the Mail application on a Mac, that recipient's name and address don't appear in the email, so other recipients don't see who else received the message. This is the point of Bcc—to protect the recipients' privacy.

At some later point, however, you might want to view the names of all the people to whom you sent that email. Look in the Sent folder in the Mail app and open the email you sent. You can find the Bcc recipients in the mail header there.

There is no way to see the names of people who were Bcc'd in mail you receive from other senders, only in mail you send. Long ago, you could access this private information by opening the long headers of an email, but that vulnerability was soon fixed.

How to View the Bcc Recipients of Your Sent Emails

To find out to whom you sent a Bcc of a Mail message:

1. Launch the Mail app

2. Go to the Sent folder in the Mailboxes panel.

   

3. Open the message you sent with Bcc recipients.

   

   Next to the recipient in the To line is Bcc, followed by an ampersand and the number of additional recipients. If there were two additional recipients of the original email, it reads & 2 more, for example.

4. Click the & 2 more link to expand the field and see the other recipients.

   

How to Add Bcc Field to Your Outgoing Emails

If you send emails that include Bcc recipients frequently, you can add the Bcc field to the header of each new email you send automatically.

To always have a Bcc field in Mac Mail:

1. Select Mail > Preferences from the menu bar in Mail.

   

2. Go to the Viewing tab.

   

3. Next to Show message headers, select Custom in the drop-down menu.

   

4. Click the + button.

   

5. Type Bcc and select OK.

   

6. Close the Viewing window.

Each new email message you begin now contains the Bcc field in addition to the usual To, Subject, and From fields.

How to Manually Add or Remove the Bcc Field

If you prefer to add the Bcc field on the fly only when you need it or remove it when you don't:

1. Open a new outgoing message in the Mail app.

2. Click the Select visible header fields icon next to the Send icon at the top of the message.

   

3. Click Bcc Address Field in the drop-down menu to toggle the header on or off.