Sending emails to Apple Private Relay
Apple’s single sign-on (SSO) feature allows their users to share their email addresses (
[email protected]) or to hide their email addresses by masking what’s provided to brands ([email protected]) instead of their personal email address. Apple will then forward messages sent to the relay addresses to the user’s actual email address.
To send emails to Apple’s private email relay, register your sending domains with Apple. If you don’t configure your domains with Apple, emails sent to relay addresses will result in bounces.
If a user decides to disable the email forwarding to your app’s relay email, Braze will receive email bounce information as usual. These users can manage apps that use sign-in with Apple from their Apple ID settings page (see Apple’s documentation).
Sending emails for SendGrid
If you use SendGrid as an email provider, you can send emails to Apple without making DNS changes.
- Go to your Apple Certificate page and allow the email address you wish to use for sending via Apple’s Email Relay Service (your desired “From” address).
- The address should be formatted as:
bounces+<YOUR_UID>@<YOUR_WHITELABELED_SUBDOMAIN_AND_DOMAIN>(an example is:[email protected]).
- The address should be formatted as:
- After the address is added to your Apple Certificate page, emails from this domain will be delivered via the Apple Private Relay system.
If your desired “From” address is an abmail address, include that in your subdomain. For example, use abmail.docs.braze.com instead of docs.braze.com.
From address values
Refer to this table for the components used when adding email addresses with Apple Private Relay.
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| UID | This value is provided in your DNS records that are provided by Braze (from SendGrid). Do not include the letter “u” in your UID in the email address. For example, if your UID is presented in SendGrid as u1234567.wl134.sendgrid.net, then 1234567 is the UID value. If you don’t have access to your DNS records, contact your Braze customer success manager to provide your UID. |
| Whitelabeled Subdomain and Domain | The initial domain and subdomain you entered into SendGrid. You can also use the HOST Value in your DNS records in SendGrid. |
Sending emails for SparkPost
To set up Apple Private Relay for SparkPost, follow these steps:
- Sign in with Apple.
- Based on Apple’s documentation, create the necessary verification files, and host these files in an accessible directory for the given domains.
- Add an A record to your DNS settings that points to the domain where your verification file is hosted. This is a one-time verification process.
- Add the email domains in Apple.
- Apple will automatically check the domains and show which ones are verified, and provide the option to reverify or delete the domains.
Make sure you complete this process within two to three days of the verification files being created, or else they will expire. Apple does not disclose how long they’re valid for.
Considerations
If a sending domain is also used as a bounce domain, you won’t be able to store any records and will need to follow these additional steps:
- If the domain has already been verified on SparkPost, you must create MX and TXT records:
| Instance | MX record | TXT record |
|---|---|---|
| US | smtp.sparkpostmail.com |
"v=spf1 redirect=_spf.sparkpostmail.com" |
| EU | smtp.eu.sparkpostmail.com |
"v=spf1 redirect=_spf.eu.sparkpostmail.com" |
To avoid SPF failures, you must create the MX and TXT records and have them propogated in the DNS before deleting the CNAME record.
- Delete the CNAME record.
- Replace it with the MX and TXT records for proper routing.
- Create your A record to point to your CDN or file hosting.
If you have any further questions, open a support ticket.
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