Gmail: How to stop Gmail hiding your email signature

It used to be possible to create your own custom signature in an email application or in webmail and then every time you sent an email message out, the signature would display under your message as was intended by the sender. Email users started to add their name, job title, the company they work, company logo and useful links to websites, Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Unfortunately, for users of Gmail this has been a little trimmed down lately with Gmail identifying signatures as repeating rather than unique content. Because of this, when Gmail displays an email message in a sequence, it will end the display of the email before the email signature is displayed. The ellipsis or […] symbol is displayed in its place. For people who don't sign off with their name and let their signature do the talking for them, this leaves them looking like they often abruptly ended an email without a final send off or confirming their identity at the bottom of an email.

Lack of Opt-out

For some users, this is unacceptable and they have been looking for a way to force their signature to be included in the Gmail email display ever since even when it is considered by Google and Gmail to be duplicate email content essentially.

There is presently no known way to opt-out of the trimming of the signature directly within the Gmail settings.

Gmail Bookmarklet

Enterprising coders at CtrlQ.org have come up with some clever ways using code to create a Gmail Bookmarklet that can be dragged over to the web browser and dropped there. This will create a button which is then present every time the web browser loads up makes it easy to force the signature into the email so it will be shown to recipients as it was intended. It does this by inserting an original code into the email signature each time in order to make it appear to be unique content to Gmail. In this case Gmail is tricked into displaying the custom signature rather than obscuring it instead.

A button is available to be dragged across from the Digital Inspiration blog here. Just search half-way down the blog post to find the large green button and drag it across to the top area in your web browser. 

For the technical readers among us, the code behind the bookmarklet looks as follows:

javascript:void%20function(){var%20e=document.querySelector(%22.aH1%22);e%26%26e.click();var%20l=document.querySelector(%22div.gmail_signature%22),o=document.querySelector(%22input[name='composeid']%22);l%26%26o%26%26(l.innerHTML+=%22%3Cbr%3E%3Csmall%20style='color:%23ddd'%3ERef%20%23%22+o.value+%22%3C/small%3E%22)}();

Add to your Bookmarks

The bookmarklet will need to be accessed every time you wish to ensure an email message will not have the signature obscurred by Gmail. This is a bit of a pain but there is no way to automate the process currently. To make it a bit easier it may be helpful to create a browser bookmark for the bookmarklet to be able to access it fast when finishing off an important email message to someone.

Bonus tip: How to change the default Google/Gmail account for users with multiple accounts (Desktop).