There’s a good chance you’ve fired off an email that you wish you could take back. I’ve done it more times that I can count and each time I felt remorse and embarrassment. There’s a good chance you might have done it too. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. It’s sometimes a little easier to make mistakes though email because you’re not standing in direct contact with the other person. As such, email can be one of the worst ways to communicate, especially if you’re trying to get across important topics. Luckily, if you use Gmail, there’s a feature that can Undo that message you really did not want to send.
The Undo Send feature is not automatically turned on in Gmail so you’ll need to activate it. It’s simple and here’s how.
Instructions for turning on Undo Send
- Open Gmail on a web browser (not the app)
- Click on the settings button at the top right
- Under the General tab, you will find Undo Send and click enable.
- You can select a duration of time, up to 30s, for taking back that email you just sent.
It’s a simple setting that you probably won’t need to use on 99.9% of your emails. However that .1% makes enabling this feature well worth the time.