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Plagued by Sender’s Remorse? Google’s finally releasing its fix to (one of) your most serious email woes. “Undo Send” is finally available for Gmail.
“How to unsend email” has to be the defining desperation query of the Internet, and finally there is an answer. The Undo feature is heading out of the Labs (Google’s opt-in, add-on, experimental features for Gmail) and will be an option for all Gmail users (via Web, at least).
So: Does it do what you think it does? Sort of.
This feature’s been available to Lab users for some time, and though it doesn’t exactly let you pluck an email from a user’s inbox if you encounter regret, it does afford you a few precious extra seconds for an “oh .....” moment before your words are eternally surrendered to the ether.
Navigate to your “Settings” pane in the menu directly below your profile photo and you’ll be given the option to “Enable Undo Send,” along with a drop-down that lets you customize the cancellation period for the feature: five, 10, 20 or 30 seconds.
I’ve got mine set to 30 because a) you can never be too careful and b) it’s as close as you can get to 24 hours.
Keep in mind Undo Send won’t help if you wake up riddled with regret the morning after sending a novella-length email to an ex. But if you’re giving your words a final once-over after sending and find a typo, you just might have time to rescue it from the clutches of the Internet before your incorrect use of “there” is immortalized in someone else’s inbox.