Gmail Adds An Official “Undo Send” Tool To Stop Emails Getting To The Wrong People

For those of us who want to send a mail and you send it to the wrong person, or you want to make a bad decision and then change your mind or just generally send mails to the wrong person and or change your mind about sending a mail, there’s a solution, thanks to Google.

If you’ve ever hit send on an email only to realise you’ve sent it to the wrong person, you’ll know the feeling of dread that hits the pit of your stomach.

But thankfully, for Gmail users at least, there is now a solution to spare any future blushes.

Google has made its ‘Undo Send’ tool an official and permanent feature nearly six years since it launched as an experiment in Gmail Labs.



This is currently available for five, 10, 20 or 30 seconds and effectively delays the message being sent for up to half a minute to give users time to change their mind.

And once they have saved the changes, the tool will be enabled for all future messages until it is switched off.

Google added the feature to Gmail Labs – a scheme the firm describes as ‘some crazy experimental stuff’ – in March 2009.

It was then added to Google’s standalone Inbox app, which launched as an invitation only app in October and was rolled out to all Android and iOS users last month.

To use the feature on the desktop, compose an email in the traditional way and hit send.

A pop-up message will appear at the top of the inbox that says: ‘Your message has been sent. Undo.’

Clicking Undo stops the message being sent and reopens it in a compose window so users can delete it, change the recipient or amend what has been written.

This works in a similar way on the Inbox app, but instead of appearing at the top of the screen, the Undo option appears in the bottom right-hand corner.

The announcement was made in a official blog post: ‘Previously a popular feature in Gmail Labs, and recently added to Inbox by Gmail, today we’re adding ‘Undo Send’ as a formal setting in Gmail on the web.

‘Undo Send’ allows people using Gmail to cancel a sent mail if they have second thoughts immediately after sending.’

It continued that the feature is turned off by default for those not currently using the Labs version.