How to show actual email address in iOS Mail app?

iOS: 12.2

In the iOS Mail app, if the sender or recipient of an email has more than one email address associated with it, how can I tell which specific email address was used? For example, if I send myself an email from my personal account to my work account, since they're both associated to the same contact, I can't figure out how to tell who the recipient actually was. I have both Short Names and Prefer Nicknames turned off in the Contacts preference.


  1. If you see the word 'Details' at the top of the message (near the right side), tap it.
  2. Click on the persons name to open the contact card
  3. Scroll to their emails
  4. Look for the email with a "recent" tag above it.*

*In older iOS versions the correct email/phone number had a different color but in new versions it has a "recent" tag above the correct email/phone number.

See below:

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An easy way I found to see the original email address is to reply to the message and scroll down in the new message until you see the original quoted message. It should start with something like:

On Mar 30, 2019, at 11:38 PM, John Doe <[email protected]> wrote:

The email address is between the < and > characters. If you don't really want to reply, just touch "Cancel" to dismiss the new email.

As pointed out below by youcantryreachingme, this only works for the sender. If you have multiple email addresses associated with the same email account, it will not reveal the address that the email came in on.

I found an alternative approach though that does appear to show everything:

  1. View the message
  2. Touch reply button
  3. In the action sheet scroll down to Print
  4. In the Printer Options screen use the two-finger zoom gesture on the image of the email
  5. In the new preview view, you should see all of the email addresses taken from the original email

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