Turn on Undo Send on your Gmail now!

Image source: Google.

Emails are one of those things you double- and triple-check before you hit the ‘Send’ button. However careful you are though, the nature and definition of ‘accident’ dictates that every once in a blue moon, you will inadvertently send that cake recipe to your employer instead of your cousin, or send a rant about one of your colleagues to said colleague themselves, or send to a prospective employer an email without your CV attached. And then spend the next few seconds mumbling profanities repeatedly before denial kicks in, and you hope the unintended recipient missed the one you sent in the mountain of other mails that they have to deal with everyday.

Do you wish there was an undo button for emails?

 

If you use Gmail, there is now. Or rather, there has been for the past six years as part of Gmail Labs, only now it’s a regular part of Gmail. You can now tone down that strongly worded email that you sent and fix that misspelling that you only spotted immediately after you clicked on the ‘Send’ button.

 

So how do you make use of this panic button? Go to ‘Settings’ after signing into your Gmail account, and halfway through the list you will see the ‘Undo Send’ section. Enabling it gives you the option to choose between 5, 10, 20 and 30 seconds window of buffering. Save the changes and you should be good to go.

 

The next time you send an email and you have second thoughts immediately after, you’ll have the number of seconds you selected to hit the undo button and decide if you’re changing your mind about something. Remember that this undo feature only adds a delay between the time you hit the ‘Send’ button and when Gmail sends out the email. Gmail can’t take back mails that has already gone into the recipients’ inbox, so if it’s going to take more than 30 seconds before you notice something’s amiss with your mail, then you’re out of luck.

 

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