Beginner Tip

This feature has been around for a while but if you are a new Gmail user you may not be knowing it. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you just regret hitting that “Send” button too soon? You just click it absentmindedly and the very next second you feel the sky all over your head. The mail’s already been sent and all you can do now is to face-palm.

While I can’t help you with your absentmindedness, I can surely tell you a way how to ‘unsend’ or undo that sent message. There is a very cool feature in Gmail Labs called ‘Undo Send’ which does what it says. It displays an ‘Undo’ link right after you send a message from Gmail.

Of course there’s a small trick here if you care to know. After enabling this feature, when you click ‘Send’, the message is not delivered at that very moment. Instead, it keeps the message on hold and displays the link ’Undo’ for few seconds. If you do not click the ‘Undo’ link within that small period of time, it assumes that you are present-minded and proceeds to send the message that was kept on hold.

Enabling the ‘Undo Send’ feature in Gmail:

» Login to your Gmail account and click the ‘Gmail Labs’ icon in the top-right corner.

» From the list of features, find the ‘Undo Send’ feature and ‘Enable’ it. Click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom.

That’s it! Enjoy

UPDATE: Now you can even set the time-out for the cancellation period to a maximum of 20 seconds. Go to ‘Settings‘ > ‘General‘. Now set the ‘Undo Send’ preferences.