How in the Tech

Stupid POP Tricks with Gmail’s “Undo” Send

By Adam Myers ⋅ March 20, 2009 ⋅

Gmail Labs, the testing ground for “not quite ready for prime time” functionality for Gmail, engineers have rolled out their latest feature – undo send. I’ve written before about how to prevent inserting your foot into your mouth when composing email in Outlook and recently, Google has provided similar functionality in Gmail. Not familiar with the saying putting your foot in your mouth? Simply, it’s when you say something and immediately regret opening your mouth because of what just came out. In a similar fashion, this can happen in the digital realm. A nasty, scathing email may be composed and sent in the heat of the moment – but you may regret it a few seconds after clicking send. Gmail now has the ability to undo send and allow you to save face.

1. From inside Gmail, click Settings from the upper right portion of the screen. Chose the Labs tab from the resulting page refresh.



2. You’ll see a multitude of functionality extensions to Gmail itself. Scroll down until you locate the option in question, Undo Send. Choose the Enable radio button before scrolling to the very bottom and Saving Changes.



3. Still within the Settings page now click on General to configure the Undo Send functionality. Currently you have the ability to add a 5 second delay on outgoing emails, but Google has stated that a 10 second delay is coming in the near future. Setting the cancellation period to 0 seconds disables the functionality while not unloading the plugin itself.



4. Now when you are finished composing an email the dialog at the top of your Gmail window will give you an option to undo the send if you are overcome with regret during the delay interval. 5 seconds isn’t a lot of time though, barely enough to notice an embarrassing typo or errant recipient – but that’s about it. Still, a welcomed feature from me.