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Curious to know how to recall an email in Gmail? Gmail is among the highest email clients with a 26% market share as of September 2020 (according to Litmus) and over 1.5 billion active users. With numerous Gmailers, we are sure many of you’re trying to require advantage of all the service’s features. One among them is that the ability to recall an email in Gmail.
The ability to recall or unsend an email in Gmail is superb and was introduced a few years ago. It’s proven to be a life-saver for those times an error slips through or once you regret sending an unpleasant email. No matter the reasoning behind it, today we’ll teach you all about the way to recall an email in Gmail. Let’s probe the small print.
How to Recall an Email in Gmail
Go to your Gmail settings
Here’s the excellent news: the Undo button will appear in Gmail automatically once you send an email. Hurrah! However, you’ll adjust the undo settings to offer yourself even longer to recall an email in Gmail.
First, you will need to log into your Gmail account on a desktop. Once you’re there, click on the small gear icon within the upper right-hand corner. A menu will pop open—from that menu, preferred Settings.
Personalize your send cancellation period
In Gmail, the Undo key shows up immediately after you send an email. (We’ll talk more about this here.) By default, this key will only be available for five seconds after you send an email. That’s not tons of your time to understand an error and fix it.
Thankfully, Gmail also gives you a choice to increase that point. Once you’re in settings, scroll right down to the likelihood that says “Undo Send.” (Make sure you’re within the “General” settings tab.) You’ll prefer to show the “Undo” button for five, 10, 20, or 30 seconds after your email is shipped.
So, what proportion of time does one got to recall the email before it’s permanently etched into your recipient’s inbox? That depends on you. But let’s face it: leaving the Undo key at 30 seconds doesn’t hurt anyone.
Scroll down and click “Save Changes.”
Once you’ve personalized the undo time for your Gmail account, confirm you scroll to rock bottom of the page and save the changes you’ve driven:
This is an essential step because it is easy to click away without saving your changes (in which case, the settings return to default).
Test your email recall skills
Now that you’ve got updated your settings in Gmail, it is time to check those recall reflexes. Plough ahead and send a test email to yourself. Once the email is shipped, you will see this crop up within the bottom left-hand corner:
Now, counting on the settings that you selected, you’ve got between five and 30 seconds to recall that email in Gmail. Once you hit the Undo key, you’ll also receive confirmation that the email has been recalled.
How to Recall an Email in Gmail for Android and iOS
If you’re using Gmail on a mobile device, the method is just about an equivalent. Although you’ll get to use your desktop to regulate the settings for the “Undo” button, this button will still show up once you use a mobile device to send emails.
In the Gmail mobile app, you will see the “Undo” button at rock bottom of the screen, like this:
That’s it: in only a couple of simple steps, you’ll recall an email in Gmail, and painlessly erase those embarrassing mistakes from your life.
Just remember: the email may reach the inbox of your recipient before you remember it. So, time is of the essence. You’ve reached a maximum of 30 seconds to recall the email, but if your receiver has already begun to see what you sent, recalling the email might not make much of a difference.
The only downside of this neat feature is that after a maximum of 30 seconds, there’s no option to recall the message. Once some time is up, that’s it.
Or is it?
While your past mistakes will need to stay within the past, you’ll avoid making future mistakes by reviewing your emails before you hit send. There are some simple ways to see your emails and avoid embarrassing moments.
FAQs
[wps_faq style=”classic” question=”Q: How do I recall an email from Gmail for the next 10 minutes?”]A: Sorry, Gmail doesn’t have cancel or recall function (beyond Settings->, General-,>Undo Mail which runs for less than a minute). But albeit it did, it’s hooked into the receiver’s server/client to honor the request, and most don’t.[/wps_faq][wps_faq style=”classic” question=”Q: How do I delete an email already sent?”]A: In Mail, within the Navigation Pane, click Sent Items. Open the message that you need to recall and replace. On the Message tab, within the Actions group, hit Other Actions, then hit Recall This Message. Click Delete unread copies and replace with a replacement message or Delete unread copies and replace them with a replacement message.[/wps_faq][wps_faq style=”classic” question=”Q: Can you Unsend an email after a day?”]A: Unfortunately, you’re unable to unsend an email if you’ve got clicked far away from your email after hitting send. And unfortunately, if you are looking to unsend an email in Gmail after an hour or after each day, the simplest Gmail can do is encourage you to proofread and double-check attachments within the future.[/wps_faq][wps_faq style=”classic” question=”Q: What happens when you undo an email?”]A: After you send a message, you will see the message your message has been sent and therefore the choice to Undo or View message. Click Undo to recall the sent email. The feature allows you to line an expiration date for the email after which the Mail is going to be deleted from the receiver’s inbox.[/wps_faq]
Conclusion
Can you unsend an email in Gmail? Definitely, but only on mobile or online. Unfortunately, there is no desktop client we’ve found that has an equivalent ‘undo’ function as Gmail. Scheduling is as close because it gets, which is that the basis of what Gmail’s undoing it anyway. It’s scheduling your email for five seconds into the longer term, not precisely allowing you to retrieve it from the opposite person’s email inbox.