Sender logos

When a message comes from a company, or you wrote to one, Mail can show the company's logo in place of two letters. Your workspace's server looks the logo up, never your browser.

The logo stands for the other side of the message. On mail you received, that is the sender. On a row in Sent or Drafts, it is the first person you wrote to. A received message shows its sender's logo unless it failed the authenticity check when it arrived, so older mail and mail you imported show logos too.

Sender logos are on for every workspace. They have two switches, described below. A mail administrator controls the feature switch, and a workspace administrator controls the company setting in General Settings.

What you see

Beside each sender, Mail shows a small chip. It starts as the sender's letters, or the sender's photo when the sender is a contact who has one. When the server has a logo for the sender's company, the logo fades in over the letters. When it has none, or the logo cannot load, the letters stay, with no broken image and no change in size. The logo sits on a white tile, so a dark mark stays readable in the dark theme.

The chip is in the message list, on each card of a conversation, in the header of the message you are reading, and on the sender card you open by clicking a name.

Sent and Drafts

You are the sender of every message in Sent and Drafts, so a row there stands for the person you wrote to. It reads "To: Dana Okafor and 2 more", with the chip of the first person in the To line. The name is the contact's name when the address belongs to a contact, otherwise the name in the To line, otherwise the address. A draft with nobody in To reads "No recipient".

The chip is the person's photo when they are a contact who has one. Otherwise it is their letters, with their company's logo over them when the server has it. The same rules as for a sender decide which companies get a logo, with one difference: Mail does not ask for a check, because you typed the address.

The cards of a conversation still show who wrote each message, so a message you wrote shows you there.

When you still see letters

A logo tells you which domain the From address names, not that the company is who you expect. A look-alike domain that passes its own check shows its own icon, never the real company's. Mail cannot check a message from a domain that publishes no DMARC policy, or mail from before it kept the check, so on those the logo says only what the From address says.

Where the logo comes from

Your workspace's server finds the logo for a company's domain, in this order:

1. The company's own mail logo. Many brands publish one for mail in their domain's DNS records, a standard called BIMI. It has to be an SVG in the BIMI format (SVG Tiny PS). If it is not, the server moves on to the site's icon.
2. The icon on the company's website. The server reads the home page and uses its Apple touch icon, then its other page icons, largest first.
3. The site's /favicon.ico.

The home page, every redirect and every page icon must belong to the same company domain. An icon hosted only on a separate content delivery domain is not used, so that a look-alike domain cannot point at a famous brand's logo. A BIMI logo is the one exception, because the company names its address in its own DNS records. Mail does not check the BIMI certificate.

Mail does not use a third party logo service. The server decodes a picture and saves a fresh copy at 128 pixels or less, and it rebuilds a vector logo only from a short list of safe elements. Nothing the other site sent is passed on to you as it arrived.

What is looked up, and what a sender can learn

• Your browser stays out of it. It loads each logo from your own workspace address and refuses any other address. The sender's site never sees your browser or your address. It can see that this server asked for the icon, a few minutes after someone first listed mail from that company.
• The server asks once for each domain, not for each message. It asks for the icon and sends nothing about you, your workspace, the recipient or the message. It identifies itself as EVERJUST-Mail-Logos/1.0 (+https://everjust.app; sender logo lookup).
• How often. After about two weeks a logo is due for a check, and Mail makes it the next time someone lists mail from that company. A company with no logo is checked again after 3, 7, 14, and then 30 days. A failed lookup is retried after 1, 6, 24, and then 72 hours.
• Not for mail that failed its check. A lookup starts for the sender of a received message unless the message failed DMARC, the check against the policy the sender's domain publishes. Mail's receiving gateway makes that check when the message arrives, and the result is recorded then. Mail with no result on record, such as older mail and mail you imported, is looked up too.
• The people you write to are looked up too. On a Sent row, the company of the first person in To is looked up, with no check, because you typed the address. A draft never starts a lookup.
• What a sender could notice. A site could see that a server asked for its icon a few minutes after someone listed a message from that company, or a message you wrote to it. It cannot tell whether the message was read, or by whom. A sender that uses a different domain for every recipient could notice that a message from that domain was listed in a mailbox with this feature on. If that matters to you, turn the feature off.
• What is kept. The logo image (a picture of at most 128 pixels and 128 KB, or a vector logo of up to 256 KB), with the company's domain and when it was found, in your own workspace. No message content and no recipient. A domain nobody has asked about for 90 days (no logo) or 180 days (a logo) is deleted with its image. Only mail administrators have read access to the saved logos, no screen lists them, and nobody can change them by hand.

Turn sender logos on or off

Logos show only while two switches are on. Both are on for every workspace until someone switches one off.

1. The feature. A mail administrator finds mail.sender_logos under Settings → Mail → Features, or under Administration → Features in the Mail app, and switches it on or off. It is on unless an administrator has switched it off, so you only need to look here when logos are missing.
2. The company setting. A workspace administrator finds Webmail sender logos (the field is named "Show sender logos in webmail") under Settings → General Settings, right after the EVERJUST Mail setting. It is on unless someone has switched it off.

Switching either one off stops Mail from queuing new lookups, and the list shows letters again the next time it loads. A company that is already waiting for its first lookup can still be looked up within a few hours, and logos already saved stay in your workspace until they age out. Nothing else in Mail changes. People pick up the change when they reload the page.

If you do not see logos

• The feature is off in your workspace. Sender logos are on unless an administrator switched them off. Ask a mail administrator to check the mail.sender_logos toggle under Settings → Mail → Features.
• The company setting is off. Check Webmail sender logos under Settings → General Settings.
• The message failed its check, or names more than one From address. See the table above.
• The server has not looked the company up yet. Reload the list in a few minutes. An old inbox with many senders fills in over a few hours.
• The company has no usable logo. Some companies have none. The letters stay.
• Another row of the table applies. Free mail providers, sending services and your own domains never show a logo, and a contact with a photo shows the photo.

Related

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