Best iPhone App to Forward Text Messages to Email

The best iPhone app to forward text messages to email sends each text from your own Mail account, so it never passes through the app maker’s mail server, and lets you choose which texts go. Fwrd works that way: it hands each matching text to Apple’s Send Email action, with no account and no Fwrd server, and its free plan includes email for 15 forwards a month. It needs iOS 26 or later, so if your iPhone runs an older version, the table below shows which apps run on it.

What you need: an iPhone with an account in the Mail app that can send, such as iCloud, Gmail or Outlook, the address that should get the texts, and a rule for which texts to forward.

Which iPhone apps forward texts to email?

These eleven US App Store apps list email as a destination. Ratings, minimum iOS and what each says about its servers come from Apple’s App Store data and each app’s own description, checked on November 4, 2026.

Prices and plans change, so check the purchase screen in your own storefront. For every destination, see the best SMS forwarding apps for iPhone.

What matters when the destination is email

• Whose server sends the email. An app either sends through Apple’s Send Email action, from your own Mail account, or through its own mail server, which means every forwarded text passes through that server. PhoneLeash says messages transit its servers; autoforward says it processes email on its servers unless you add your own mail server; SMS Forwarder and Forward SMS: SMS Forwarder have said on their websites that email passes through their servers.
• A subject and no compose sheet. Apple’s Send Email needs a subject and Show Compose Sheet off, or Shortcuts stops to ask, which a locked iPhone can’t answer.
• Filtering. An inbox fills fast. Forward codes, bank alerts or receipts, not every conversation.
• Spam. Forwarded texts from a new sender can land in spam until you mark one as safe.

Why I’d pick Fwrd for email

I make Fwrd, so here’s my case, and each point is on its App Store page:

• Your Mail account sends it. Apple’s Send Email action sends each text from Mail on your iPhone, so nothing comes from a Fwrd address or a Fwrd server.
• No account. Nothing to sign up for, and your forwarding history stays on your iPhone.
• Guided setup hands you a ready-made shortcut with Fwrd’s action and Apple’s Send Email, subject included.
• The same text can go further. One automation sends it to email and to Slack, Telegram or another phone, and one text counts once.
• Include Who Sent It adds a From: line with the sender.

How to forward iPhone texts to email with Fwrd

1. Add Email in Fwrd. Tap +, choose Email Address, enter the address and follow the guided setup.
2. Create a Message automation in Shortcuts and set Message Contains to a word your texts include, such as code.
3. Let it run without asking. Turn off Confirm Before Run on iOS 27, or choose Run Immediately on iOS 26.
4. Add Fwrd’s action, Forward Message to All Destinations, with Message set to Shortcut Input.
5. Add Apple’s Send Email below it, with Fwrd’s output as the message, your recipient, a subject such as Forwarded text, and Show Compose Sheet off.

Fwrd’s email page answers the common questions, and the email post shows each screen.

What forwarding to email can’t do

• No app can read your texts on its own. iPhone gives apps no access to your messages, so each one needs the Shortcuts automation you set up.
• It can’t forward texts you already have, only new ones that arrive after the automation is on.
• It doesn’t send pictures. Fwrd passes on only the words of each text.
• It can’t send without a Mail account. Apple’s Send Email needs an account in Mail that can send, and the iPhone has to be on and online.