Apple Private Relay Addresses

If your Wave account shows an address like k7f2x9qp@privaterelay.appleid.com, you used Sign in with Apple and chose Hide My Email. Apple generated that masked address for Wave and forwards anything sent to it on to your real inbox. Nothing is broken — but it's worth swapping it for your actual address, because the relay makes two things go wrong.

What the relay affects

Email delivery. Every summary, share, and notification Wave sends goes to the relay address first and reaches you only if Apple forwards it. That's an extra hop that can delay mail, land it in spam, or stop it entirely if forwarding gets switched off in your Apple ID settings. Wave flags this in the app: Apple Private Relay Email Detected — "This is a masked email from Apple's Private Relay service. For the best experience with Wave, please use your actual email address."

Account matching. When you sign in with a new provider, Wave reunites you with your existing account by matching the email address. A relay address never matches your Gmail or Microsoft address, so there's nothing to match on — sign in with Apple and you can end up in a second, empty Wave account while your recordings sit safely in the first one. See my recordings disappeared after I got a new phone if that's what happened.

Point Wave at your real address

This changes where Wave sends things. It doesn't change how you sign in, and you don't lose anything by doing it.

If you need summaries going to more than one place, add the extras under Alternative Emails and pick per session.

Fix the two-accounts problem

Changing the contact email doesn't merge anything — the relay address is still your Apple sign-in identity. To make sure Apple and your other logins all open the same library:

1. Sign in to the account that actually has your recordings, using whichever method gets you there.
2. Go to Login Methods (Linked accounts on the web) and Connect the other providers.

Connecting from inside your account works regardless of email, which is exactly why it fixes the relay case that automatic matching can't. Full walkthrough in Login Methods.

FAQ