Learn how to view full email headers in Apple Mail for Mac to verify the sender’s authenticity, identify spam or phishing attempts, and troubleshoot issues.
Email headers contain important information that permits you to trace the email’s delivery path across servers, view timestamps, understand message routing, detect spoofing attempts or forged headers, confirm encryption and security details in email transmission, troubleshoot issues like delivery delays or failures, and more.
To view this information in Apple’s built-in Mail app on the Mac, you’ll first need to turn on full email headers by following the step-by-step instructions below.
View full email headers in Apple Mail for Mac
1) Open the Mail app on your Mac and select the desired email message.
2) Navigate to the View > Message > All Headers menu at the top.
This will display all email headers for the selected message. To return to the default headers, repeat the steps above but select Default Headers in the menu.
Add an All Headers button to the Mail toolbar
If you need to frequently view full email headers, you may want to add a dedicated button to Mail’s toolbar:
1) Right-click or Control-click an empty area in Mail’s toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar in the menu.
2) Drag the All Headers button to the toolbar, then click Done. You now have a dedicated button a click away to view all email headers whenever you need.
Turn on full headers for all emails
If you’d like to view full headers for all emails in your inbox, you can turn on this option in the Mail settings. You can also choose specific headers you’d like to see, like the return path or content type:
1) Open the Mail app and click Mail > Settings or Mail > Preferences in the menu.
2) Select the Viewing tab, tick the Show message headers menu, and select Custom.
3) Select specific headers you’d like to see by clicking the plus sign.
4) When finished, click OK to save the changes.
The selected email headers will be displayed for all messages in your inboxes.
To tweak the email headers or return to factory defaults, select the Default option in the menu next to Show message headers. To hide a specific header, choose Custom, then select a header and click the minus sign to remove it from view.
Viewing full email headers is a feature for power users; that’s why email clients by default only display the sender’s and recipient’s email addresses, along with the subject. But if you need to view full email headers, Mail for Mac makes it easy.
More email tips
Marketers, spammers, and companies often use tracking pixels to know if you’ve seen or read their messages. But with a few clicks, you can stop email tracking in Gmail and Apple Mail on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, which will increase your privacy.
If your primary email client is Apple Mail, be sure to check out 40+ tips for Apple Mail that will boost your productivity, save you time, and help you triage your inbox faster.