I was under the impression that only the iMessages app on macOS Ventura provided the undo send feature. Well, apparently, it is becoming a “thing” everywhere. But an interesting fact I just found out, was that Gmail has had this feature for quite a long time! Man, I wish I had known about this back in the day!

The undo send email feature in Gmail for Web was officially rolled out in 2015, but for six years prior to the launch, it was available as experimental feature. Shows how much attention I was paying to Gmail intricacies at the time! Teaching others makes one much more hyper aware of what is available at one’s fingertips, so to speak! However, while it was an experimental feature, you did have to manually enable Gmail Labs in order to gain access to it.

Unsending an email in Gmail is very simple. After you send an email to someone via Gmail Web, the following appears:

When I click “Undo", the following appears:

However, what does not seem to be stated anywhere, is that the unsent email is not forever deleted, it reverts to a draft! So in order to get rid of it forever, you have to go into your Gmail “Drafts” folder and permanently delete it there! The unsent email appears in the ”Drafts” folder. Something like the following:

In the early days of the feature, you have to manually enable it in your Gmail settings. Now, it is enabled by default. And there is no option to turn it off. Why would you want to anyway?

The default delay for unsending a Gmail email is 5 seconds. But that really does not necessarily give you time to think about whether you want to unsend the email or not! I set it to the longest period of time possible, which is 30 seconds. In order to change the delay period, you have to click on the “Gear” icon in your Gmail for web, and the following appears:

THEN, you have to click on “See all settings”. And the following appears:

As you can see, within the General tab, which is where you are directed to by default, is the Unsend option. I selected “30 seconds”, but the following options are also available:

If you have set up your macOS Mail app to receive your Gmail emails, when you unsend an email there, it will also be reverted to a draft. You will have to go into your “Drafts” folder there and manually delete the draft as well.

I will also be writing a post on unsending a Gmail email on iPhone. The UX there is a bit different, and I found it especially important to increase the delay period to the max available, because otherwise, if the period is too short, like 5 seconds for example, there is a chance you don’t even see the “Undo Send” pop up appear.

Happy unsending Gmail emails!

Related Resources

• 'Undo Send' Feature Arrives on Gmail for Android: PC Mag

• Gmail's 'Undo Send' Option Officially Rolls Out: Forbes

• Google’s lifesaving Undo Send feature comes to Gmail for Android: The Verge