How to Set Your Contact Picture in Gmail

If you’ve received emails from people that included profile pictures, then you may have wondered how that was possible.

As a Gmail user, you have the ability to set your own contact picture as well, and it’s an option you can access from your Settings menu.

Our guide below will show you how to set your own Gmail profile picture so that it appears for other people that use Gmail or other compatible email accounts.

How to Use a Custom Gmail Picture

  1. Open your Gmail inbox.
  2. Select the gear icon, then See all settings.
  3. Scroll down to the My picture section and click the About Me button.
  4. Click the Profile picture button.
  5. Select the picture you wish to use.

Our guide continues below with additional information about how to set your Gmail contact picture, including pictures of these steps.

Have you ever received an email from someone and seen their picture when you opened the email? This means that they have set up their contact picture, which is a helpful way to put a face to a name, and personalize the email communication.

If you would like to set this up for your Gmail account, then you have the ability to do so. All you will need is a couple of minutes and a picture on your computer that you would like to set for your account.

Want to let your email contacts know that you’re going to be unavailable? Our Gmail vacation responder guide will show you how to set that up.

How to Set Up Your Gmail Picture (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article are going to show you how to add a picture to your Gmail account that your recipients will see when you send them a message.

I am going to be using a picture saved on my computer, as that is the only option available at the time this article was written. Therefore, make sure to download or upload the picture that you would like to use for this activity before continuing below.

Step 1: Go to Gmail at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox and sign into your account if you haven’t already done so.

Step 2: Click the gear icon at the top-right of the window, then click the Settings option.

open the gmail settings window

Step 3: Scroll down and click the Select a picture option to the right of My picture.

click the Select a picture link

Step 4: Click the gray Choose File button.

choose the file to upload

Step 5: Browse to the picture you want to use, click it once to select it, then click the Open button.

select the picture to use

Step 6: Adjust the cropping box in the preview section of the window, then click the Apply changes button when you have adequately configured your contact image.

set contact picture in gmail

Have you ever sent an email only to realize that you made a mistake? Learn how to recall an email in Gmail and give yourself a little extra time to think of any errors that you might have made, or even reconsider sending the email entirely.

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