A Hide My Email Ventura feature for third-party apps has been removed from Apple’s website. The disposable email address feature now appears to remain limited to the company’s own Mail and Safari apps.
The feature has been removed from the Ventura preview page sometime in the past week or so …
Background
Apple introduced the Hide My Email feature last year, as part of its iCloud+ service. With this option selected in either Mail or Safari, Apple generates a unique disposable email address for you, and automatically forwards emails to your primary account.
This means that you can send an email to someone without them getting your real email address, and the same when registering for an online service with an email address. You can delete the disposable address at any time, to immediately stop emails from anyone who has it.
Hide My Email Ventura feature gone
Currently, Hide My Email only works with Apple’s own apps, meaning that there’s no way to take advantage of it if you use a third-party email app or web browser. That was set to change in macOS Ventura, with Apple’s preview page saying:
Hide My Email in apps. Keep your personal email address private with Hide My Email in third‑party apps.
This was present in the preview page as recently as August 3. However, MacGeneration noticed that it has now disappeared.
The privacy feature is still present on the French version of the website, but as the site notes, it’s not unusual for Apple to update the US site first and then take a little time to roll out changes to the rest of its sites worldwide.
It’s unclear at this point whether Apple has decided to drop the feature, or simply to postpone it. Often when Apple postpones a promised feature, it will leave the reference in place, adding an asterisk and a footnote. The footnote will typically say either “Coming soon,” “Coming later,” or will specify a broad time-frame like “Coming in fall 2022.” The company has not done this here, but instead removed the text altogether.
This is in contrast to Freeform, further down the page, which has a “Coming later this year” note.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment, and will update with any response.
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