How to Set a Company-Wide Email Signature for Every User in Google Workspace

To set a company-wide email signature in Google Workspace, you need one of three routes, because the Admin console has no “set signature for everyone” button: the Append footer compliance setting, the Gmail API, or a Google Workspace Marketplace app. Only the API and Marketplace routes put a personalized signature into each user’s Gmail. Patronum is one of those apps. Patronum applies one approved signature template to every user, or a different one per organizational unit or Google Group, and fills in each person’s name, title and phone from the Google Directory.

The three routes at a glance

Google’s admin article lists all three, and for large organizations says “Workspace Marketplace offers apps to help you” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

Route	Personalized per user?	User can edit it?	Who sets it up	Best for
Append footer	No, one shared footer per organizational unit	No	Admin with the Gmail Settings privilege	A legal notice nobody should remove
Gmail API	Yes	Yes	Super admin (domain-wide delegation)	Teams with a developer and time to maintain scripts
Marketplace app (for example, Patronum)	Yes	Yes, but overwritten on the next sync	Admin, through the app	Teams that want managed templates and deployment without maintaining scripts

Route 1: The Append footer setting

The Append footer is a compliance setting that adds the same footer to outgoing mail for an organizational unit. Users “don’t see the message when they’re writing an email. And, they can’t change or remove it” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

1. Sign in to the Google Admin console with the Gmail Settings admin privilege.
2. Go to Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Compliance.
3. Pick the organizational unit on the left. Child units inherit from their parent.
4. Scroll to Append footer and add your footer.
5. If internal recipients should see it too, choose the option to append it to internal messages.
6. Save. Google says “changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly.”

The footer editor has text formatting tools and accepts an image from “the URL for the image on a public web server.” It “doesn’t support HTML content,” though, so you can’t paste in a coded signature. Drive images aren’t allowed, the limit is 10,000 characters, and Client-side encrypted messages aren’t supported (Append footer, Google Workspace Admin Help).

The real gap is personalization: one footer per organizational unit can’t carry each person’s name, title or phone number. That makes it a good home for a disclaimer (see our email disclaimer templates and HIPAA email disclaimer guide) and a poor substitute for a signature.

Route 2: The Gmail API

The Gmail API sets a real signature in each user’s Gmail. Google says it “appears when users open their compose window and they can edit it if they wish” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

Signatures live on each send-as alias (Gmail API reference). Updating one needs the gmail.settings.basic or gmail.settings.sharing scope, and Google lists both as Restricted (Gmail API scopes). In practice, writing signatures into other people’s accounts means a service account with domain-wide delegation:

1. As a super admin, authorize the service account under Security > Access and data control > API controls > Manage Domain Wide Delegation, with the Gmail settings scope.
2. Run a script that patches the signature on each user’s send-as alias.
3. Re-run it whenever a template, job title or phone number changes.

Two warnings. With domain-wide delegation, Google notes “the app has access to the data belonging to all of your users” (Google Workspace Admin Help). And an API signature “is added to new emails only” (Gmail API reference).

Route 3: A Marketplace app (Patronum’s policy steps)

A Marketplace app does the API work for you and adds templates, targeting and a schedule. In Patronum, a policy applies the signature, and “Patronum syncs signature policies to Gmail hourly via the Gmail API” (Patronum Help Center).

1. Create a policy with a SIGNATURE action. That’s the action that writes the signature to Gmail (Patronum Help Center).
2. Set the scope. Choose all users, an organizational unit or a Google Group, and exclude people through another Google Group (Patronum Help Center).
3. Build the template with Directory placeholders such as {{fname}}, {{lname}}, {{jobTitle}} and {{phone}} (Patronum Help Center).
4. Click PREVIEW to see which users the policy will target.
5. Activate the policy. Saving isn’t enough. The first run can take up to 60 minutes after activation, then the policy runs hourly (Patronum Help Center). Gmail “may cache signatures for 1-2 hours,” so allow for that before you check a compose window.

After that, a template edit reaches everyone in scope on the next hourly run. More detail is on our Google Workspace email signature management page.

How to set different signatures by department in Google Workspace

Natively, you can set a different Append footer per organizational unit, but none of them can be personal. In Patronum, templates “can be assigned by organizational unit, group, or user attribute,” so Sales, Support and Legal each get their own design from the same Directory data (Patronum Help Center). You can also narrow a policy with conditions such as Department or Job Title (Patronum Help Center).

A custom Patronum admin role can let your marketing team manage only email signatures for a specific set of users (Patronum Help Center), and each domain alias can get its own signature for multi-brand setups (Patronum Help Center).

Need a starting design? Our business email signature templates use Directory fields.

Rollout check before you go company-wide

• Pilot group. Scope the policy (or footer) to a small test group first. In Patronum, use a Google Group and check PREVIEW before you activate.
• Aliases. Each send-as address has its own signature, and Patronum can only set signatures tied to a SendAs address (Patronum Help Center). Send a test from each alias your pilot users have.
• New messages. Send from a fresh compose window to an outside address. Nothing there? Check the policy is activated and allow for the hourly run plus Gmail’s cache.
• Replies. Gmail lets each user pick separate defaults for new emails and replies (Gmail Help). The Gmail API can’t set the reply and forward signature, so ask pilot users to choose it once, then reply to a thread to confirm.
• Mobile. Since April 2025, Gmail on Android inserts the web signature “if no mobile signature is set,” and a non-empty mobile signature overrides it (Google Workspace Updates). Send a test from the Gmail app on each platform your staff use.
• User edits. Have one pilot user change their signature, then confirm the approved version returns after the next sync.

When all six pass, widen the scope.

Sources

• Google Workspace Admin Help, set up user signatures in Gmail: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/gmail/set-up-google-workspace-user-signatures-in-gmail
• Google Workspace Admin Help, add a standard footer to outgoing emails: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/gmail/advanced/add-a-standard-footer-to-outgoing-emails
• Google Workspace Admin Help, domain-wide delegation: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/apps/control-api-access-with-domain-wide-delegation
• Gmail API reference, users.settings.sendAs: https://developers.google.com/workspace/gmail/api/reference/rest/v1/users.settings.sendAs
• Gmail API, choose scopes: https://developers.google.com/workspace/gmail/api/auth/scopes
• Gmail Help, create a Gmail signature: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/8395?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
• Google Workspace Updates, release notes 4 April 2025: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2025/04/release-notes-04-04-2025.html
• Patronum Help Center, manage multiple Gmail signatures: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/manage-multiple-gmail-signatures-8bua8j/
• Patronum Help Center, signature not appearing after policy run: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/gmail-email-signature-not-appearing-for-a-user-after-policy-run-18fg68m/
• Patronum Help Center, creating a policy: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/creating-a-policy-jmctey/
• Patronum Help Center, when will my policy run: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/when-will-my-policy-run-13y3b4c/
• Patronum Help Center, signature template attributes: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/what-attributes-can-i-use-within-my-email-signature-template-jdr4na/
• Patronum Help Center, custom permissions and roles: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/custom-permissions-and-role-management-1vq9yns/
• Patronum Help Center, multiple SendAs signatures: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/adding-multiple-sendas-email-signatures-g32o90/
• Patronum Help Center, reply and forward signature: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/how-to-change-reply-to-email-signature-in-gmail-17iwdqe/