Hide My Email alternatives for Android
Hide My Email needs a paid iCloud+ account and only runs on Apple devices. On Android the closest equivalents are forwarders like Firefox Relay, SimpleLogin and Addy.io. All of them hide the address and then pass the mail on to your real inbox.
Why Hide My Email isn’t an option on Android
It ships with iCloud+, which is a paid Apple subscription, and it runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac. You can sign in at iCloud.com from an Android phone and look at addresses you already made. You can’t create one in the moment an app asks you for an email, which is the only moment it would help.
So on Android the question becomes which of the other tools does the same job, and the answer depends on a difference most comparisons skip.
The Android options are forwarders
Firefox Relay, SimpleLogin and Addy.io all work the same way as Hide My Email. You generate an address, the service receives whatever is sent to it, and it passes that mail on to the inbox you already have.
Their free tiers differ. Firefox Relay gives 5 masks on the free plan, SimpleLogin gives 10, and Addy.io gives 10 on its shared domain plus as many as you like on a personal subdomain. These change, so check the provider’s own pricing page before you pick one.
What forwarding does and doesn’t do
Forwarding hides your address. The sender gets a string that isn’t yours, so if they sell their list, the buyer gets the stand-in. That’s worth having and it works.
The mail still arrives where it always did. Sign up for nine newsletters behind nine masked addresses and you have nine newsletters in your personal inbox, each one now slightly harder to trace.
Shared domains have a second problem. Services that put every user on one are the easiest for a signup form to refuse, because blocking that one domain blocks all of their users at once. Both of the big free tools acknowledge this happens.
The other approach: a mailbox that isn’t your inbox
Instead of a stand-in address that hands the mail onwards, the address can be a real mailbox that keeps it. The sender delivers, the mail lands somewhere that isn’t your personal account, and you read it there.
Confirmation links and login codes still work, because a real mailbox receives mail like any other. The difference shows up six months later, when your inbox has the same number of things in it as before you signed up for anything.
A few RSS readers now issue their own addresses and work this way. It’s a small category and it’s where we sit.
Where Rovatrove fits
Rovatrove is a real mailbox wrapped in an RSS reader. Every newsletter or site you sign up to gets its own working address on our domain, the mail arrives in the app, and you read it next to the blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels you follow. You can reply from it. Your personal inbox is never in the chain.
Because each service has its own address, mail arriving at one tells you which service let it out. When you’re finished with a service the address is retired: anything sent to it afterwards is dropped, and it’s never given to anyone else.
It’s Android, and it’s a reader first. Following things is free for five feeds; the addresses are part of the paid plan.
Questions people ask
Can you use Apple Hide My Email on Android?
Hide My Email needs a paid iCloud+ account and only runs on Apple devices. On Android the closest equivalents are forwarders like Firefox Relay, SimpleLogin and Addy.io. All of them hide the address and then pass the mail on to your real inbox.
Is Hide My Email free?
No. It comes with iCloud+, which is a paid subscription. The free iCloud tier does not include it.
Does Hide My Email stop the mail reaching you?
No. It hides your real address from the sender and forwards everything to the inbox you already use, so the sender never learns the address and your inbox still fills up.
What is the difference between a forwarder and a separate mailbox?
A forwarder gives the sender a stand-in address and passes the mail on to your personal inbox. A separate mailbox receives the mail and keeps it, so your personal inbox is never in the chain at all.
Can you manage Apple Hide My Email addresses from an Android phone?
You can sign in at iCloud.com and see the addresses you already made. What you cannot do is generate one at the moment an Android app or site asks for an email, which is when you need it.
Do masked addresses get rejected by signup forms?
Sometimes. Services that share one well-known domain across all their users are the easiest for a site to refuse, because blocking one domain blocks everybody. An address on a domain that is not on those lists is accepted more often.