How to View Email Headers in Mac Mail
Reading Time: 2 minutes I often receive spoofed emails that appear to be sent from my own email address or from a business I work with, like a bank. These types of emails are common. Mac Mail typically identifies them as junk and automatically moves them to the Junk folder, so you don’t see them.
However, when you see an email that seems to come from your own address, you may worry whether your email account has been hacked or if your password has been compromised. You can easily check this by examining the email header. Email headers contain a lot of useful information, such as:
- Verifying if an email is legitimate by showing the real sender’s information.
- Tracking the route an email took across different servers.
- Identifying spam or phishing emails based on suspicious source details.
- Troubleshooting email delivery issues if a message didn’t arrive or was delayed.
To view email headers in Apple Mail on a Mac, follow these steps:
Open Mac Mail: 1. Launch the Mail app on your Mac.
Select the email you want to check: 2. Find and click on the email whose headers you want to view.
Go to the “View” menu from the top menu bar: 3. At the top of your screen, click on the “View” option in the menu bar.
Show message headers: 4. From the drop-down menu, hover over “Message” and then select “All Headers” or “Raw Source.” This will display the full email headers at the top of the email.
Alternatively, you can use the following shortcuts:
- Raw Source: Option – Command – U
- All Headers: Shift – Command – H
Email headers include information like the sender’s IP address, the servers the email passed through, and other metadata.
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