Trick to recall an email in Gmail before the recipient reads it

Sometimes, in a fit of rage, you send an email to your colleague you should have avoided at all costs. Moments later, you only regret it and start cursing yourself. Fortunately, Gmail has an option to undo this action. Read this tutorial to find out how to recall an email in Gmail.

How to recall an email in Gmail

Popular email services like Gmail, let their users delete a sent email or recall an email in Gmail after 1 hour. That’s because the email you send is not delivered instantly. Instead, it’s held on the server-side for a few seconds allowing you to undo the action, if you wish to.

1. Open your Gmail account.
2. Compose a mail.
3. Hit the Send button.
4. To undo the action, go to Settings.
5. Select See all settings.
6. Switch to the General tab
7. Scroll down to Undo Send section.
8. Click the drop-down arrow adjacent to Send cancellation period seconds.
9. Choose an appropriate time limit
10. Hit the Save changes button.

Learn how you can fix your email sins of the recent past!

How to recall an email from Gmail?

Open your Gmail account and go to Settings.

Select the See all settings option from the menu displayed and switch to the General tab.

Under it, scroll down to the Undo Send section. It offers a small window via which you can undo your mistake, but you only have a few seconds to do it. By default, the limit is set to 5 seconds. You can change it to a maximum of 30 seconds time.

When done, scroll down to the bottom and press the Save Changes button.

The cancellation period you’ve set will be applied instantly across all your devices running the same Gmail account, including the Gmail app on iPhone, iPad, or Android devices.

Now, to test the feature, write an email and send it. Instantly, you should see a message with the following options.

• Message Sent.
• Undo.
• View messages.

Since, you want to unsend the message you sent deliberately or accidentally, hit the Undo link. The period to undo this action will begin, the moment you hit the Send button.

You’ll see a confirmation message, reading Sending undone.

That’s it! Hope it helps!