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.