How to Add a New Email Account to iPhone or iPad

Most iPhone and iPad users already have one email account setup on their iOS device, but you can easily add a new email address to the iPhone or iPad, or even multiple new email addresses to the same device, all to be managed in the same Mail app of iOS. This is nice for those of us who juggle multiple email accounts for personal, work, and other purposes.

This tutorial will walk through adding and setting up new email accounts or additional email addresses on the iPhone or iPad. After a new email account is setup and configured in iOS, you can check emails, send, receive, reply, forward, and perform any other email functions from all of the addresses on the device.

How to Add & Setup an Email Account on iPhone and iPad

This will add a new email address of your choice to the iPhone or iPad. If you want to add multiple email accounts to the iPhone or iPad, repeat the process outlined below:

1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone or iPad



2. Choose the “Passwords & Accounts” option in iOS 13 and later, choose “Mail” settings option in iOS 12 and earlier



3. Tap on “Accounts” at the top of the Mail settings



4. Choose “Add Account”



5. Select the email account service to add to the iPhone or iPad from the list: iCloud, Exchange, Google / Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com / Hotmail, or “Other”



6. Enter your email account address and login information as instructed*



7. Optionally and applicable to some email providers only, choose whether to enable other account functions like calendars, contacts, and other related abilities

After the email account has been added to iOS, you can then open the Mail app to find the new email account available to access and use as normal.

You can check the email account for new messages, send, receive, reply, forward, and do all other email functionality from any email account added to an iPhone or iPad.

* Most of the time the appropriate mail servers and settings will be detected automatically, for some smaller email providers and for some ISP email accounts, you can adjust these settings manually using your own information for mail servers, ports, protocols, and other server-side adjustments if necessary.

If you’re like me and have multiple email accounts setup in iOS, you will likely want to set the default email address used on the iPhone or iPad to the desired email account. You can change the default email address at any time in the Mail settings, but you can also change what email address any specific message is sent from by adjusting the “From” section when you’re sending off a message or email.

Can I create a new email address for the iPhone or iPad?

Yes, you can add an existing email address to the iPhone or iPad, or you can create a brand new email address if you want to do that too. Any of the email services offered in the setup process make this easy: Gmail, Outlook / Hotmail, Yahoo, and if you use iCloud you can create an @ iCloud.com email address directly on the device too.

If you setup or add a new account and decided you don’t want it on your iPhone or iPad, don’t worry, because email accounts can be deleted from iOS at anytime.

Managing multiple email inboxes on iPhone, iPad

By default the Mail app will show all mail inboxes with the “All Inboxes” mailbox, and the email app will also automatically check for new emails from all setup accounts and email addresses. You can also choose to show only specific email inboxes or toggle into those individually if desired:

1. Open the “Mail” app and tap the “Mailboxes” button in the upper left corner
2. Choose the Email inbox to show email messages for, or choose “All Inboxes” to show emails for all email accounts setup on the device

Personally I prefer the universal all mail inbox approach so that all emails to all email accounts are visible on the same screen, but I use this iOS tip to quickly show only unread emails to filter and help manage multiple inboxes and email accounts.

This obviously focuses on iPhone and iPad, but for those with desktop computers you can also add new email accounts to the Mac just as easily.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning another strategy for managing multiple email accounts on iPhone and iPad: using different email apps. This is possible with Gmail, Yahoo, and many popular email services as well, which have their own individual email apps available from the App Store as third party downloads. The benefit to that approach is that each email address gets silo’d into it’s own app, which can make it easier for some users to manage.

Do you use multiple email accounts on your iPhone or iPad? Have any questions or comments about this? Want to see more mail tips? Let us know!