Have you ever hit send and then realised you spelled your contact’s name wrong?
…Or somehow autocorrect changed it to “apologies for any incontinence” instead of “inconvenience”?
…Or wished someone a “lonely weekend”?
There are a lot of awesome features in Gmail, but Undo Send saves my @$$ the most often!
By default, the email recall time is set to 5 seconds, but I find that by the time I see my mistake and reach for my mouse to move over and click “undo,” the 5 seconds have elapsed.
However, you can easily change your Undo Send time to 10, 20 or 30 seconds! Here’s how:
- Click the Settings gear in the upper right > See all settings
- On the General tab, just a few lines down is the “Undo Send” section > select 10, 20 or 30
- Scroll to the bottom and click the Save changes button
Quick, easy, painless, and will more than likely save your bacon repeatedly!
Note that this adjustment to “Undo Send” only applies on Gmail webmail (in your web browser), not from your computer’s email program (like Mac mail or Outlook), nor from your phone’s email app.
Next time you hit “send,” on an email, you’ll notice that the “undo” button shows up in the lower left of your screen and stays there either for the # of seconds you chose in settings OR when you take another action, like heading back to the inbox or clicking somewhere else.
It’s important to note that once you click away from the screen that shows the undo link, the undo option goes away.
Want to Get to Inbox Zero and stay on top of your emails? Check out the mini-course Get Productive with Gmail.
p.s. (Hack #3) This blog post is part of a series called Top 40 Google Hacks You’ll Wish You’d Been Using All Along. Download the whole handy Top 40 Google Hacks PDF.
