Custom E-Mail Signature (updated)

There is a hack out that will allow you to change your email signature in Mail. We wrote about it before for older firmware but someone emailed us and asked why it doesn’t work with 2.x firmware. The main reason is the directory path has changed to mobile from root. I’m also updating the link to convert the file to XML. It’s not easy, so be ready to spend a few minutes on this one:

1. Make sure your signature is not the default one that only says, “Sent from my iPhone”. Changing it to anything else so it creates a custom file.

2. Backup existing config file for mail. It’s called com.apple.mobilemail.plist and it’s located in the /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/ folder. Just SSH in and copy it to your computer somewhere in case you mess the file up :)

3. Copy the same file, com.apple.mobilemail.plist, to your desktop so we can edit it.

4. Before we can edit it you must convert it from binary format to ascii/text format using this site: iappcat.com/plist/bin2xml. Just browse for the file we put on the desktop and click convert. It will then give you a file to download. You can just save over the one on the desktop since we made a backup of the original.

5. Open com.apple.mobilemail.plist with a text editor.

6. Find something like this between the :

Sent from my iPhone.<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Learn how to use, hack and mod the iPhone at appleiphoneschool.com.</div>

We will be replacing the above code with our own custom code but we need to convert it from CSS and HTML to XML. To do this, customize the code below and then convert it with centricle.com. (Select Encode)

John Doe

yourwebsite.com

sent from my new iPhone

Your code will look like this after you convert it:

<div style="font: 10px 'Lucida Grande',Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif;
line-height: 18px;
color: #525252;
margin: 6px 0;
padding: 6px;
border-top: 1px #999999 solid;
border-bottom: 1px #999999 solid;
background: #fff">
<div style="padding: 2px 0 2px 70px; background: url('http://yourwebsite.com/yourimage.jpg">
<strong>John Doe</strong>
<br />
<a href="http://yourwebsite.com">yourwebsite.com</a>
<br />
sent from my new iPhone
</div>
</div>

7. Now save the file and upload it to your iPhone via SSH. You may notice that the image doesn’t show up when you go to compose an email. This is because mail doesn’t connect to the internet during composing so you won’t see the image. Also, many email providers block the image anyway. I have found that Gmail, Yahoo & Hotmail block this feature although sending to another iPhone works fine. A possible way around this is to covert the image to data URL. Again, this doesn’t work for most mail providers either. Here’s a site that will convert it for you: http://www.sveinbjorn.org/dataurlmaker. I suggest just using links and other simple coding.

Using the Data URL here’s what it should look like:

Mine doesn’t have the lines in it because I removed that code. And I’m also using the option of the Data URL that’s why you can see the image in Compose Mode. Here is a link to my exact file: com.apple.mobilemail.plist If you need help just email me at help@appleiphoneschool.com.