How to Whitelist an Email in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and More

Imagine waiting for an important email, never receiving it, and then discovering it in your junk folder months later. It’s probably happened to you, and I know it’s happened to us.

Whitelisting emails is a helpful tech skill. We make sure to whitelist our favourite email newsletters, any important contacts we expect to hear from, and software programs like DocuSign.

In this article, we'll show you how to whitelist an email on all major email providers, such as Gmail and Outlook.

How to Whitelist an Email in Gmail
How to Whitelist an Email in Outlook
How to Whitelist an Email in Yahoo
How to Whitelist an Email in AOL
How to Whitelist an Email in Apple Mail
How to Whitelist an Email in Windows Live Desktop
How to Whitelist an Email in ProtonMail

What is a whitelisted email?
A whitelist is a list of approved or safe email addresses to help a spam filter determine whether it should allow delivery. Whitelists may also be referred to as an allowlist or safelist.

Why whitelist emails?
If your inbox is anything like ours, it can be tempting to unsubscribe and delete everything. But, that’s not a great plan. Some of those emails in your inbox are important. Like, your whitelisted emails.

If we're on a recipient's whitelist, we can guarantee our emails will be received. If we want to make sure we receive messages from a certain person or company, we simply need to manually add them as a contact.

Think of whitelist emails as the “emails you actually want to receive.” These emails could be appointment reminders, updates from bloggers you follow, or coupons to your favourite retail store.

There are tons of other reasons why you might want to whitelist emails, including:

• Staying on top of important emails.
• Managing your inbox.
• Reducing the risk of spam or phishing attacks.
• Complying with certain industry standards.

Whether you use Google or Windows Live, let’s take a minute to learn how to whitelist emails on various email providers.

1. Click the gear icon in Gmail and select “See all settings” from the Quick Settings menu.

2. Navigate to “Filters and Blocked Addresses” in the top menu.

3. Select “Create a new filter.”

In Gmail, whitelisting an email actually involves creating a filter.

4. Add a specific email or a whole domain in the “From” field.

The “From” field is where I specify what’s getting whitelisted. In Gmail, we can specify either a specific email address (e.g., contact@drimtel.com.au), or we can whitelist a whole domain by omitting everything before the at symbol (e.g., @drimtel.com.au).

The former will whitelist one specific email address, while the latter whitelists anyone who is sending emails from that domain.

5. Click “Create filter.”

From there, we don’t need to input any additional information. We simply click the “Create filter” button at the bottom of the window (next to the blue “Search” button).

6. Check “Never send it to Spam” in the checkbox.

Clicking the button brings up a new window. Here’s where we actually specify that we're whitelisting an email. In Gmail, we do this by checking the “Never send it to spam: box.

Doing so will ensure that emails that meet the criteria we specified never end up in Spam or Trash (unless we move them there manually).

7. Click “Create filter.”

Once this information is specified, we click the Create filter button again, and this creates the whitelist within Gmail.

Note: The default email provider for Android is Gmail. Follow the above instructions to whitelist emails on your Android device.

1. Click the gear icon in Outlook and select “View all Outlook settings.”

When you select it, a drop-down menu will appear. You'll choose View all Outlook settings at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

2. Select “Mail” from the settings menu.

3. Choose “Junk email” from the submenu.

4. Click “Add” under “Safe senders and domains.”

5. Enter the email address that you want whitelisted.

6. Choose “Save.”

This will save your whitelist preferences and ensure that emails that fit the criteria don’t make it to your junk email folder in Outlook.

1. Open Yahoo Mail and log in.

2. Navigate to “Settings” then click “More Settings.”

3. Select “Filters” and hit “Add new filters” to enter the email you’d like to whitelist.

4. Name the filter and add the email address.

5. Select to send all mail to “Inbox.”

6. Save your settings.

1. Log in to your AOL account.

2. Open “Contacts” from the left navigation pane.

3. Click the “New Contact” icon and add the email address.

4. Click the “Add Contact” button, and you’re set.

How to Whitelist an Email in Apple Mail

1. Log into your Apple Mail account.

2. Click “Mail” in the menu bar.

3. Select “Settings.”

4. Click on the “Rules” tab.

5. Enter a new description in the box. “Whitelist” is a good descriptor.

6. Type the address you want to whitelist and then select “Inbox” from the dropdown menu.

7. Select “OK” to save your changes.

1. Open the Windows Outlook 365 app.

2. Navigate to “Tools” and then select “Rules.”

3. Click on “New Rule.”

4. Name your rule “Whitelist.”

5. Select “From” and enter the email address.

6. Then, select “Move to” from the dropdown menu and select “Inbox” from the next dropdown menu.

7. Click “Save” to save your settings.

1. Log into your ProtonMail account.

2. Click “Settings,” then select “Go to settings.”

3. Select “Filters” from the sidebar.

4. Click the “Add address or domain.”

Once I click on the Add address or domain button, it will open the dropdown menu. Then, I choose Allow.

5. Select either “Email” or “Domain.”

Depending on my selection, I can enter the email address or domain in the field box.

6. Click “Add address” to save your changes.