Imessage showing email address instead of phone number

Q: Why is my iPhone sending Messages from my email instead of my phone number?

Open the Settings app on your iPhone. Scroll to Messages in the menu and tap Messages. Tap the Send & Receive item in the Messages menu. Scroll to the Start New Conversations From list, and select the default address you would like your messages to come from (likely your phone number.)

Q: How do I change my iMessage from email to phone number?

Go to your phones iMessage section, then tap on the Send and Receive section. Simply click on the option which shows the New Conversation From. Tap the phone number instead of showing the email. Access your Apple account.

This is a guide on how to configure iMessage to use your phone number instead of your email address when starting a new conversation. New iPhone users are often confused when using iMessage (Apple’s own texting app), because they expect the other side to see their phone number. By default, however, iMessage will use your registered email address as a means of presenting yourself to contacts, if you are logged into your Apple ID.

Table of Contents Show

iMessage: Display phone number to contacts instead of email address
iMessage Troubleshooting
Re-add Their Email Into Your Contacts
Ask Them to Sign Off
Change Your Own Settings
Why is my iPhone sending Messages from my email instead of my phone number?
How do I change my iMessage from email to phone number?
Why isn't my iMessage showing my phone number?
Why is iMessage using my email?

Some iMessage users prefer to have their phone number shown to the other side, instead of their E-Mail adress. As an email address (especially private ones) is not necessarily recognized at first sight. Maybe you also want to make sure that your counterpart is aware of your number, right from the first message.

iMessage: Display phone number to contacts instead of email address

Settings → Messages → Send & Receive → select phone number

Starting new conversations in iMessage means that your current settings will be used with respect to your identification. You may opt to use one of the connected email accounts, or your phone number that is registered with your Apple ID.

To use a phone number rather than an email address, we will need to open the “Settings”. From there, scroll down to and tap “Messages” and then “Send & Receive” to configure iMessage’s defaults for starting new conversations. Now tap your phone number of choice and make sure, the checkmark appears next to it.

Hint: If you are currently not logged into your Apple ID (seen at the very top), only your phone number will show up. To sign in, select “Use your Apple ID for iMessage”.

iMessage Troubleshooting

Settings → Messages → Send & Receive → Apple ID

If your messages are still being sent from your email address, consider this quick troubleshooting step:

Log out of your iMessage account by going to Settings → Messages → iMessage and tapping your Apple ID at the very top. Then select “Sign Out” and log back in using your “Apple ID” credentials. This helps fix most of the common iMessage problems that users encounter. To sign back in, tap the button labeled “Use your Apple ID for iMessage”.

If you still need help, we show you how to fix the most common iMessage problems in another article.

Have you ever been texting with someone on your iPhone, only to have their chat randomly switch to a whole new contact? There you are, happily typing away, when all of a sudden you have to jump into a new message box that says it’s from their email instead of the main contact.

This minor bug in the communication system between iOS and OSX will happen either if you have a contact saved in your phone incorrectly, or if they haven’t switched from their “@me” account in iChat over to their phone without turning off the former first.

Thankfully, solving the problem is actually a fairly easy fix.

Re-add Their Email Into Your Contacts

The first way of getting things back in order is to simply add the sender’s email address into their main contact which has already been stored in your contact list.

To do this, tap their name at the top of the iMessage bar, which will take you to the linked email address’ contact card.

Tap the “i” icon in the top right corner, just to the left of the saved email. Once this is done, you’ll be greeted with a screen that will give you options to email them, set up a FaceTime call, or “Add [the email] to an Existing Contact”.

Tap this, and you’ll be brought to your contact list, containing all the other names currently stored on the phone. Scroll down to find the contact you want to add the email to, and tap in.

After you click this, you’ll be taken to their contact page, where the email will have already been imported into the first slot automatically.

After this switch is made, no matter if they’ve emailed you from their iChat account or otherwise, the name will always appear only as the contact you’ve saved it under and nothing else.

Ask Them to Sign Off

RELATED: How to Rename Group Chats in iMessage

Sometimes, people can accidentally leave their iChat on through OSX after they’ve already started texting you from their phone.

If at any point their laptop/desktop leaves sleep mode with iChat activated, the iChat username can take precedence, and your conversation will be converted over to their chat window instead of your text box.

To solve this problem, it’s as simple as asking them to check if their iChat is logged on, and if so, having them sign out. Once they’ve done so, the next text they send will automatically switch back over to their number.

The above window is an example of a user still logged into iChat, while the next example is what you’ll see as soon as the iMessage account is only open in one place.

Change Your Own Settings

But what if you’re the culprit who’s been making a mess of someone else’s text log with your own email flub?

RELATED: Why Are Some iMessages Green and Some Blue on My iPhone?

If someone is telling you that your email is showing up in their text log instead of the normal contact, there’s one setting you can check on your end which might be causing the trouble.

To find it, start by opening the Settings app, and then navigating to the “Messages” section.

Here you’ll need to scroll down to the “Send & Receive” options, which will show you all the linked email addresses, iChat accounts, and phone numbers are linked to your iMessage app on the phone.

In case it isn’t already, to get your phone number appearing normally again you have to set the option to “Start New Conversations From” your number instead of any associated emails that might be linked to an iChat account or otherwise.

Also note that as long as you’re logged in from this email on an OSX linked account, iChat will automatically hold on to that information as a part of your laptop or desktop’s credentials. The only place this information can be removed is from the iPhone you’re working from in the iMessage portion of the Settings application.

Why is my iPhone sending Messages from my email instead of my phone number?

Open the Settings app on your iPhone. Scroll to "Messages" in the menu and tap "Messages." Tap the "Send & Receive" item in the Messages menu. Scroll to the "Start New Conversations From" list, and select the default address you would like your messages to come from (likely your phone number.)

How do I change my iMessage from email to phone number?

Go to your phone's iMessage section, then tap on the Send and Receive section. Simply click on the option which shows the New Conversation From. Tap the phone number instead of showing the email. Access your Apple account.

Why isn't my iMessage showing my phone number?

Go to Settings > Messages. Toggle iMessage to OFF and then back to ON. Once iMessage has been activated, scroll to Send & Receive to check if the right mobile number is ticked.

Why is iMessage using my email?

On an IPad/ipod without a cell number, you have to use your Apple ID. Using your Apple ID on either (in iMessage) automatically sets you up to use whatever email is tied to your Apple ID for iMessaging -- even though you didn't tell it to do anything of the sort.