How to Undo Send an Email in Gmail (with Photos)

Gmail is easily becoming an essential part of many people’s daily lives. Google’s email service not only offers the option to set tasks and events and communicate with anyone via email, but it also gives people options to chat in real-time, share documents, and more.

But what happens when you send an email that you weren’t ready to send or shouldn’t have sent? Here’s how you can recall (unsend) an email in Gmail and avoid embarrassment!

Step 1: Open Up Your Gmail Account

In order to make sure you can recall an email in Gmail, you’ll first need to log into your account and update your settings.

You’ll need to go to your Gmail here in your desktop’s or laptop’s web browser. If you haven’t logged in yet, go ahead and enter your email address and password. If you are logged in, you can go to Step 2.

Step 2: Go to Your Settings

Next up, you’ll want to enable the Undo Send feature if you haven’t already. This feature is what helps you unsend an email in Gmail.

In order to do this, you’ll click on Gmail’s settings button. This looks like a little grey wheel with spikes. Then, you’ll want to click on the See all settings option.

From there, you’ll be taken to the settings page.

Step 3: Enable the “Undo Send” Feature

Once you’ve accessed the settings page, you’ll want to find the option to enable recalling emails.

To do this, you’ll want to scroll down to the Undo Send option under the General tab.

While Gmail currently sets a 5-second automatic “undo send” option, you can set it up to recall an email for up to 30 seconds. I recommend going for the highest time to give you more time to recall emails.

Once you’ve chosen the time that works for you, you’ll need to scroll down and click the Save Changes box. If you don’t do this, the settings won’t update.

Step 4: Compose A New Message

Once you’ve saved your settings, you should test out your new recall feature! To do this, you’ll first need to compose a new message.

You can do this by pressing the compose button on the left-hand side, and the new message box will automatically appear.

Next, you can type out whatever message you want. We suggest sending the email to yourself to confirm the Undo Send is working, just in case it doesn’t work well during testing!

Step 5: Send Your Message

After you’ve composed a new message and added an email address to send it to, now you’ll want to send your email.

Step 6: Watch For Undo Option/Undo The Email

Once you press the send button, a message will pop up in the bottom left-hand corner that your message is being sent. Then, it will say that the message was sent.

From there, you can decide if you want to view the email or recall it. To recall the email, simply press Undo.

Step 7: See Your Recalled Email

If you pressed the undo button fast enough (in this case, in 30 seconds), the email will pop back up as if you never sent it! Gmail will also inform you “sending undone” or that the email was successfully recalled.

You can confirm that the message was recalled by checking your “sent” folder. If you don’t see the email with the subject you sent, that means you successfully recalled your email.

Here is a quick video from dottotech showing how to easily recall an email sent through Gmail and how to turn on this feature.

Recalling an Email in Gmail on Mobile Phones

Did you know that if you use the Gmail app on your phone (both iOS and Android), you can also recall emails? As long as you have your settings to recall an email, it works exactly like the desktop website.

Once you compose and send your message, the app will give you the option to undo your message. If you undo the message within the timeframe you set (in this case, 30 seconds), it will pop back up as a draft email on your screen. It’s that simple!

The image featured at the top of this post is ©In Green/Shutterstock.com.