Use Gmail's Undo Send Feature

On August 23rd, 2010, Google Labs rolled out an update to the Undo Send feature on Gmail. This feature originally gave one the option of having 5 seconds to click "Undo" after sending an email with a delay time up to 30 seconds. It is now a fully-fledged feature in Gmail.

Steps

  1. Log in to your Gmail account. Currently, Gmail's mobile interface does not allow you to access settings, so you will need to log in from a computer to enable this feature.
  2. Find the "Settings" link in the upper right corner. It will be located next to your Gmail address in bold text to the left, and "Help" and "Sign Out" to the right. Click on it.
  3. Check "Enable Undo Send" and customize the time delay. The default timing for delaying the sending of an email is 10 seconds. If you want to change this time, you can shift it to 5, 20, or 30 seconds.
    • Go to "Settings", "General" tab and find the "Undo Send" section and change the duration under the drop-down menu box.

  4. Send yourself a test email. Use an alternate email address and write yourself a short message. Send it.
    • Undo Send works with any email program. Having the Undo Send feature turned on delays the actual message send for up to 30 seconds, it does not take back a message you sent. As a result, any email address you send an email to can be undone.
  5. Click "Undo" when you are redirected to your inbox. There will be a yellow message box alerting you that your message has been sent, and giving you the option to click "Undo" or "View Message". Click Undo to cancel the sending of the email.

  6. Confirm that the message has not been sent. There will be a small yellow box at the top reading "Sending has been undone." After you have clicked "Undo", you will be directed to the unsent message. Here, you can edit the message and email address(es) you were sending it to, or discard the whole email.

    • Check the alternate email inbox to ensure that the message did not send.



Warnings

  • Avoid making it a regular habit of sending inflammatory emails. Sleep on them!
  • Proofread your email address(es) before sending. This saves sending emails to the wrong person (Google Labs also provides an application called "Got the wrong Bob?" that helps to alert you to similar user names when adding in addresses. You may find it useful to enable it if you have a lot of people with the same first names in your contacts).

Things You'll Need

  • Gmail account

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Sources and Citations

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