iCloud Mail now allows nine email aliases instead of three, though Apple's own guide still says threeiCloud Mail now allows nine email aliases instead of three, though Apple's own guide still says three

Apple has raised the number of email aliases an iCloud Mail account can create from three to nine, without announcing the change.

MacRumors reported the new limit on 5 October and said it had confirmed the change is live at iCloud.com. According to MacRumors, a Reddit user noticed it the week before, followed by a member of its own forums. Apple has said nothing about it. Its iCloud user guide, read by APPDOOK on 5 October, still says users can create up to three @icloud.com email aliases on iCloud.com.

What an iCloud Mail alias is

An alias is an extra @icloud.com address that delivers to the same iCloud Mail inbox. Apple's guide describes creating and managing them in iCloud Mail on iCloud.com, and treats them separately from Hide My Email, the iCloud+ feature that generates random forwarding addresses. Aliases are addresses the user chooses, so they read like ordinary email addresses rather than strings of random characters.

The guide sets two other rules that MacRumors' report does not say have changed. Turning an alias off is temporary, while deleting one is permanent. And someone at the limit who deletes an alias must wait seven days before creating a new one. Under the old limit that rule applied at three aliases; whether it now applies at nine, the guide does not yet say.

Can everyone create nine aliases now?

MacRumors confirmed the change on iCloud.com, and its report gives no sign of a regional or account-type restriction. It also says the increase could conceivably be a test, though it thinks that unlikely. APPDOOK has not been able to confirm it across different kinds of account, and Apple's documentation offers no help either way.

A MagSafe 3 cable update, also unannounced

In a second change Apple did not announce, it has released firmware 3.2.0 for the USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable, replacing version 3.1.12. A developer who posts on X as aaronp613 flagged the release for the 2m cable on 4 October and MacRumors reported it on 5 October. It is the first update for the cable since February 2023.

Apple publishes no release notes for the cable, so what 3.2.0 changes is unknown. According to MacRumors, the update installs automatically over time when the cable is connected to a Mac and a power adapter, there is no way to apply it by hand, and macOS does not show the cable's firmware version in System Information.

Our take

Tripling a limit is a generous change, and Apple has made it in the least helpful way: live on the website, contradicted by its own documentation. Until the guide is updated, anyone planning around nine aliases is relying on a number Apple has not committed to in writing. That matters most for the seven-day rule. Someone who reaches nine, deletes one and finds the limit has quietly gone back to three would be stuck, and deletion is permanent.

The use case is real. A handful of chosen addresses, one for shopping, one for a club, one for work sign-ups, is a simple way to keep a primary address private and to see which service leaked it when spam arrives. Hide My Email does a similar job with random addresses, but a chosen alias is easier to read out on the phone or give to a person. Nine is enough for most people to stop rationing.

Our advice is to use the extra aliases if you have them, and to avoid deleting any until Apple's guide catches up. The MagSafe update needs nothing from anyone. Like the cable's last update, it arrives on its own, and the fact that no one outside Apple can say what changed is the normal state of accessory firmware rather than a cause for concern.