My Settings
My Settings is the per-user area in Salesforce where an individual user configures their own personal preferences.
Definition
My Settings is the per-user area in Salesforce where an individual user configures their own personal preferences. It covers things like display language, locale, time zone, email signature, calendar defaults, notification preferences, password, and identity verification methods. In Lightning Experience you reach it by clicking your profile photo (the avatar) in the top-right corner and choosing Settings. The page opens a categorized left menu, with a Quick Find box at the top so you can jump to a setting by typing the first few letters of its name.
My Settings is the user-facing counterpart to Setup. Setup holds org-wide configuration that administrators control. My Settings holds per-user preferences that each user controls for themselves, within the limits the admin allows. The org default locale is set in Setup, while a user's personal locale override lives in My Settings. Some preferences carry admin enforcement, so a user cannot use My Settings to disable mandatory multi-factor authentication or relax a password policy.
How My Settings is organized and what each section controls
Getting to My Settings (and the Quick Find shortcut)
In Lightning Experience, click your profile photo at the top of any page and select Settings. That opens the personal settings page, which is the modern name for what older docs and Salesforce Classic still label My Settings. The left sidebar groups every preference into expandable categories, and the Quick Find box at the top is the fast way in. Type the first few characters of a page name, such as "pers" for Personal Information or "lang" for Language and Time Zone, and matching pages filter into view as you type. In Salesforce Classic the path is your name in the top-right, then My Settings, then a category like Personal, Display and Layout, or Email. The categories differ slightly between the two interfaces, but the underlying preferences map to the same user record fields. My Settings is available in all editions except Database.com. If a user hits a privilege error opening it, the admin may need to confirm the Improved Setup User Interface option is on. Knowing both the avatar route and the Quick Find shortcut saves real time when you are walking a new user through their first-day setup.
Personal Information
The Personal Information page lets a user update their own contact details: name, email, phone, address, and other work details stored on their User record. Some fields are deliberately locked because they need admin action. Username and Profile are the obvious examples, since changing either has security and licensing consequences. The fields a user can edit write straight back to the org User record, so any automation that watches the User object (a flow or workflow on User updates) fires when those edits save. This is also where the user changes their password and security question, assuming the org password policy allows self-service changes. Email is worth a careful note. The email on the User record is where Salesforce sends system notifications and verification messages, so an out-of-date address here is a common cause of users not receiving approval emails or reset links. When onboarding someone, confirming their Personal Information is accurate is a cheap step that prevents a surprising number of downstream support tickets. The page shows the same data an admin would see on the User detail record in Setup, just scoped to the one user editing it.
Language, Locale, and Time Zone
Language, Locale, and Time Zone are three separate settings that users routinely confuse. Language controls the text of the Salesforce interface, the labels and buttons. Locale controls formatting: how dates, times, numbers, and currency symbols display, plus name order. Time Zone controls how date-time values render for that user, which matters enormously for activities, reports, and audit timestamps. The org sets defaults for all three, and the user can override each in My Settings. A common real-world case is a team spread across regions. The org default locale might be English (United States), but a colleague in London sets their locale to English (United Kingdom) so dates read day-month-year and currency shows in pounds where appropriate. Time Zone is the setting that trips people up most. If a user logs an activity at what they believe is 3 PM but their time zone is wrong, the record stores a different absolute time, and reports filtered by date can look off by a day. When a user complains that times look wrong everywhere, the first place to check is their personal Time Zone here, not the data itself.
Email Settings and the signature
Email Settings is the per-user email configuration. Here a user sets their preferred outbound From name and address, chooses whether replies route back to them, and writes their email signature. They can also select which email composer to use and, where the org has enabled it, send through their own Gmail or Outlook mail server rather than through Salesforce. The signature deserves a clear distinction from the org-wide email footer. The signature is the personal close to a message: the sender's name, title, and contact line, written by the user in My Settings. The org email footer is set by an admin and usually carries legal or compliance text, such as a confidentiality disclaimer. Both can append to the same outbound email, so a finished message may show the user's personal sign-off followed by the company footer. Users often ask an admin to "fix my signature" when the thing they actually want to edit is sitting right here in their own My Settings. This is also where Email to Salesforce lives. If the feature is enabled org-wide, the user generates their own unique auto-log address on this page, and that address stays tied to their account.
Display, Layout, Tabs, and Record Type defaults
The display group is where a user shapes how Salesforce looks and behaves for them alone. They can set field label alignment and the spacing density between elements, and toggle dark mode where the org has turned it on. None of these choices touch other users; they are purely personal. Tabs and Pages controls which tabs appear and lets a user customize related lists on detail pages within what the admin permits. Record Type Preferences is a quietly useful one. When several record types exist for an object, a user can set a personal default so new records skip the record type chooser and open the type they create most often. A support agent who only ever logs one kind of case can set that default and shave a click off every new record. Activity view settings, which control how tasks and events display on record pages, also live in this area. The theme through all of it is the same: these are preferences, not configuration. The admin defines what is possible and what the starting defaults are, then each user tunes their own view inside those boundaries without filing a request.
Security: identity verification and what users cannot override
My Settings includes the security choices a user makes for their own account. They register and manage their identity verification methods here, choosing among Salesforce Authenticator, a one-time code by SMS or email, or a physical security key. The admin sets the policy for when verification is required. The user picks which methods to enroll. A strong habit to teach is registering more than one method, because a user with only a single method gets locked out the moment that device is lost or replaced. The boundary between user choice and admin enforcement is the important concept. A user can add verification methods, but they cannot switch off multi-factor authentication when the org mandates it, and they cannot loosen the password policy the admin has set. My Settings exposes only the controls a user is allowed to change. Anything governed by org policy stays read-only or simply does not appear. This is why "let me just turn that off in My Settings" is not always possible, and understanding the split helps you give users an accurate answer instead of sending them looking for a switch that an admin deliberately removed.
How to personalize your account in My Settings
Anyone with a Salesforce login can personalize their own experience through My Settings. Here is how to open it in Lightning Experience and set the preferences users adjust most. No admin permission is needed for these personal changes.
- Open My Settings
Click your profile photo (the avatar) in the top-right corner of any Lightning Experience page, then choose Settings. The personal settings page opens with a category menu on the left.
- Jump straight to a page with Quick Find
Type the first few characters of the page you want into the Quick Find box at the top of the left menu. For example, type "lang" to reach Language and Time Zone or "email" to reach Email Settings.
- Set language, locale, and time zone
Open Language and Time Zone. Pick your interface Language, your Locale for date and number formatting, and your Time Zone so activities and reports show the correct local time. Save.
- Write your email signature
Open Email Settings (My Email Settings in Classic). Enter your signature in the Email Signature field, set your preferred From name and address, and save. This signature appends to your outbound emails.
- Register identity verification methods
Open the identity verification or Advanced User Details area and enroll at least two methods, such as Salesforce Authenticator plus SMS, so you are not locked out if one device is unavailable.
Sets the text of the Salesforce interface (labels, buttons, help). Separate from Locale.
Controls formatting of dates, times, numbers, currency symbols, and name order for your account only.
Determines how date-time values display for you. A wrong setting makes activity times and date filters look off.
Your personal sign-off appended to outbound mail. Distinct from the admin-set org email footer.
Sets which record type new records open with, so you skip the chooser for the type you use most.
- My Settings preferences apply only to your account. Changing your locale or signature never affects other users.
- You cannot disable mandatory multi-factor authentication or relax the password policy from My Settings. Those are admin-enforced.
- Language and Locale are different settings. Changing Language alone will not switch date formatting; adjust Locale for that.
- Username and Profile are read-only here by design. Only an administrator can change them in Setup.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to My Settings in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on My Settings.
- Access Your Personal Settings in Lightning ExperienceSalesforce
- Edit Your Email SettingsSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on My Settings.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What kind of configuration lives in the My Settings area for a Salesforce user?
Q2. In My Settings, which item do users register for themselves once the admin sets the policy?
Q3. How does a personal email signature configured in My Settings differ from the org-wide email footer?
Discussion
Loading discussion…