Apple has raised the iCloud Mail alias limit from three to nine. The higher cap is live on iCloud.com, and Apple has not announced it. A Reddit user first noticed the change last week and posted about it in the r/iCloud subreddit. Nothing has come from Apple since.
The iCloud User Guide still says you can create up to three @icloud.com aliases, so the support page is out of step with what the account settings now allow.
The Limit Is Now Nine While Apple’s Support Page Still Lists Three
An iCloud Mail alias is an extra @icloud.com address that delivers into your iCloud Mail inbox. You can send and receive from it on iCloud.com and on any device with Mail turned on in iCloud settings. Each alias gets a label and a full name, and that name appears in the From field of anything you send.
Aliases are not the same thing as Hide My Email. Hide My Email generates random addresses that forward to your real inbox, which is covered in this Hide My Email walkthrough. An iCloud Mail alias is an address you choose yourself, so it is easier to recognize and easier to hand out.
The feature has been in the news for the wrong reasons lately. Apple fixed a Hide My Email flaw after a year of inaction, and later scrapped a planned domain change that would have made those aliases easier to block. Standard iCloud Mail aliases were not part of either story.
Addresses on a custom email domain on iCloud+ are a separate setup. They are managed from the iCloud+ Features page on iCloud.com rather than from the alias list.
Adding an Alias Takes Four Steps on iCloud.com
Aliases are created in the web version of iCloud Mail. The process takes about a minute.
- Go to icloud.com/mail and sign in with your Apple Account.
- Select the Settings button at the top of the Mailboxes list, then choose Settings.
- Under Account settings, select Add Alias.
- Enter the alias address, a label and the full name you want shown in the From field, then select Create.
Separate aliases for shopping, newsletters, banking and app sign-ups keep your primary address off most mailing lists. A disabled alias returns mail to the sender, so you can switch off one address that starts attracting spam without touching your main inbox. Turning an alias off is temporary, while deleting it is permanent.
Apple’s guide notes a seven-day wait before you can create a replacement after deleting an alias from a full set of three. An alias must be between 3 and 20 characters long.
