Apple Was Going to Break Hide My Email. Enough People Complained to Stop It.

Apple has walked back part of a change to its disposable email features, and it is a win for everyone that pushed back in June.

Back on June 17, Apple told developers that Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email would both be merged onto one shared domain, private.icloud.com. That plan would have pulled Hide My Email aliases off regular icloud.com addresses, which was the entire reason the feature worked as well as it did.

In an updated notice posted Monday, Apple says that part is off the table. “After further consideration and reviewing community feedback, iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com,” said the company.

The reason this matters goes back to how Hide My Email launched with iOS 15 in 2021. Because a burner alias looked exactly like a normal iCloud address, websites could not block one without accidentally banning a pile of real Apple users. The aliases flew under the radar by design. Moving them to a dedicated domain would have handed every site a single string to block, killing the whole thing in one shot.

The Sign in with Apple part of the change is still happening though. Apple says new Sign in with Apple addresses will start being issued on private.icloud.com later this year, replacing privaterelay.appleid.com for new accounts.

But existing addresses are not affected, according to Apple. “Existing addresses on privaterelay.appleid.com will continue to work and forward mail to users without interruption.”

Developers still have some work to do, as Apple says anyone running an app or website that uses Sign in with Apple should make sure their account systems, email validation logic and allowlists accept the new private.icloud.com domain alongside the existing privaterelay.appleid.com domain. Email providers with filtering or routing rules that reference Apple’s relay domains will need to update those too.

However, for regular users, nothing changes. The switch happens quietly in the background and old addresses keep working exactly as they always have, which is a good thing. Thanks Apple for sticking to your privacy promises.