How to send an email

Swift version: 5.10

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

In the MessageUI framework lies the MFMailComposeViewController class, which handles sending emails from your app. You get to set the recipients, message title and message text, but you don't get to send it – that's for the user to tap themselves.

Here's some example code:

func sendEmail() {
    if MFMailComposeViewController.canSendMail() {
        let mail = MFMailComposeViewController()
        mail.mailComposeDelegate = self
        mail.setToRecipients(["you@yoursite.com"])
        mail.setMessageBody("<p>You're so awesome!</p>", isHTML: true)

        present(mail, animated: true)
    } else {
        // show failure alert
    }
}

func mailComposeController(_ controller: MFMailComposeViewController, didFinishWith result: MFMailComposeResult, error: Error?) {
    controller.dismiss(animated: true)
}

Make sure you add import MessageUI to any Swift file that uses this code, and you’ll also need to conform to the MFMailComposeViewControllerDelegate protocol.

Note that not all users have their device configure to send emails, which is why we need to check the result of canSendMail() before trying to send. Note also that you need to catch the didFinishWith callback in order to dismiss the mail window.

Warning: this code frequently fails in the iOS Simulator. If you want to test it, try on a real device.