Add formatting to emails

You can add formatting to your emails in the Fastmail web interface or Fastmail mobile app using the formatting toolbar that appears on the email composer.

Formatting toolbar

Our message composer has a built-in formatting toolbar that allows you to make the following changes:

  • Font styling such as bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough
  • Font face and text size
  • Text and highlight colors
  • Inserting images and links
  • Bulleted or numbered lists
  • Quote blocks
  • Text alignment and direction

In the web interface, you can hover your mouse over each icon to see what each tool does.

If you do not see the formatting toolbar when composing a message, this is likely because rich text has been turned off for your account. See Change default rich text or plain text below for more details.

Formatting in the Fastmail mobile app

The Fastmail mobile app includes a formatting toolbar in the composer. You can swipe the toolbar left or right to access all of the available formatting options.

Note: Some formatting options in the web interface toolbar, such as font size, text size, or colors, are not offered in the mobile formatting toolbar at this time.

Change default email formatting

You can customize your default text font, size, and color.

  1. Open Settings → Signature & Compose.
  2. Click the Compose options tab.
  3. Scroll down to the Compose section, then see the option for Default style. Use the dropdown menus on the toolbar to edit the font, size, and color of your text.

Change default rich text or plain text

You can choose whether you compose messages in rich text or plain text by default:

  1. Open Settings → Signature & Compose.
  2. Click the Compose options tab.
  3. Scroll down to the Compose section, then see the option for Compose format. Select the Rich text or Plain text option.

If you want the formatting toolbar to show by default, you will want this option set to Rich text.

If you would like to compose as rich text by default but still use plain text formatting when replying to a plain text message, you can also check off the When replying, use the same format as the original message option on this screen.

Note: There is one formatting option when using Plain text. You can use the Ctrl + M keyboard shortcut, which rewraps paragraphs and tries to align the text to make it neater.

Switch between rich text and plain text in a message

If you're composing a message and you want to switch formats for this message only, you can click the gray More dropdown menu in the upper right hand corner and select Make rich text or Make plain text.

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