How to Unsend an Email in Gmail: Here Is How To Cancel ‘Send’
We all have emails we wish we never sent. Well, now you can actually undo send and act like nothing ever happened. Here is how.
We’ve all been there. The moment you hit ‘Send’ on Gmail, you realize you sent it to the wrong person. Or it may be one of those angry emails you know you shouldn’t have sent.
If you thought you couldn’t unsent emails on Gmail and accepted your fate, here is one tutorial you want to tune into.
Gmail actually allows you to undo send, but here is the catch. You need to retract it right away.
If you wait for hours and days, or even minutes, you will lose the ability to cancel the email.
The trick is to catch your mistake quickly and act fast. My Gmail setting was initially set to 5 seconds to undo my mistake, but you can extend the grace period up to 30 seconds if desired.
Here is how to cancel your emails sent on Gmail and get up to 30 seconds to do it.
Cancel an email with Undo Send
If you sent an email in Gmail and decide you don’t want to send the email, you have a short window of time to actually cancel send.
Yes, you can retract the message and your receiver will never see the email.
The trick is to ‘undo’ send right away.
- Right after you send a message, see the black ‘Message Sent’ popup.
- Click ‘Undo’.
- You’ll now see ‘Message Undone’ as a confirmation that your message got unsent.
Set how many seconds you to recall a message
By default, your cancellation period is set to 5 seconds. But you can extend that to 30 seconds max. Here is how.
- Go to Gmail.
- Log in and click ‘See all sessings’ in the top right corner.
- Go down the list and find ‘Undo Send’.
- Choose a cancellation period from the drop-down options (5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds).
- Go to the end of the settings, and click ‘Save changes’.