Google Adds "Undo Send" Feature to Gmail

[Steven Bogos]

Google Adds "Undo Send" Feature to Gmail

Undo Send has long been an "experimental" feature of Gmail that is now official.

How many times have you send an email and instantly regretted it? Be it a job application with a glaring typo, an angry heat-of-the-moment rant to a friend of family member, or accidentally CC-ing grandma on those naked pic you sent your S.O. The "undo send" feature has long been a part of the Google Labs [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/29418?hl=en] suite of "experimental" features, but today Google has finally made it an official Gmail feature.

Undo Send' allows people using Gmail to cancel a sent mail if they have second thoughts immediately after sending. The feature is turned off by default for those not currently using the Labs version, and can be enabled from the General tab in Gmail settings.

So how "immediate" is immediately? Well, we are talking seconds here, with the maximum "grace period" being capped at 20 seconds. Still, that's often more than enough for those "instant regret" emails that we are all guilty of sending, and it's nice to have that little window of safety in case things go wrong.

People currently using the experimantal Labs version of 'Undo Send' will have the setting turned on by default at launch.

Source: Gmail [http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/undo-send-for-gmail-on-web.html]

Permalink

 

[mad825]

Such powers have no effect to me for I have!....An third-party E-mail client. No sucker can undo E-mails from my disk.....Nice feature, I guess E-mails are glorified IMs today.

...Now only if I had friends that sends me E-mails...

 

[Scars Unseen]

Now they just need to add an "Undo See" feature to Google Images...

 

[Whoracle]

Such powers have no effect to me for I have!....An third-party E-mail client. No sucker can undo E-mails from my disk.....Nice feature, I guess E-mails are glorified IMs today.

...Now only if I had friends that sends me E-mails...

Going by the article and the 20 second timeframe, it sounds like GMail just holds off on sending the mail for 20 seconds. Only way to implement this globally. So the mail doesn't arrive in your inbox before the grace period ends. It doesn't delete the mail from your inbox.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

At first I thought you guys are late to the party since Google gave me that option a freaking long time ago, but as it turns out, it was a test version and today it just released.

Now they just need to add and "Undo See" feature to Google Images...

There are things, dark things, in the deep part of the internet. Once you see them, they can't be unseen. Even Google can't help you with that.

Such powers have no effect to me for I have!....An third-party E-mail client. No sucker can undo E-mails from my disk.....Nice feature, I guess E-mails are glorified IMs today.

...Now only if I had friends that sends me E-mails...

Going by the article and the 20 second timeframe, it sounds like GMail just holds off on sending the mail for 20 seconds. Only way to implement this globally. So the mail doesn't arrive in your inbox before the grace period ends. It doesn't delete the mail from your inbox.

That's how it sounds to me as well. I don't see any other way of doing it except for literally every single email service provider to allow google to delete mails form their inbox and that just won't happen, ever.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Pff, how useless. Seriously, if you "need" this, just look and or think about your mail before hitting the send button. After sending around 30K e-mails since 1994 I can safely say a whopping 20 second grace period is just utter useless. XD

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Pff, how useless. Seriously, if you "need" this, just look and or think about your mail before hitting the send button. After sending around 30K e-mails since 1994 I can safely say a whopping 20 second grace period is just utter useless. XD

I don't know about that. I've sent my share of emails as well, but for some reason I find it easier to notice an error when the message is presented in plain text than when it is still in the text box. For example, I noticed you said "utter useless" instead of "utterly useless" right off the bat, but half of my posts on the Escapist are immediately edited because when I look at them posted in the thread I realise an obvious mistake I made.

 

[Lightknight]

It's actually 30 seconds for what that's worth.

 

[TitanAura]

No man should have that kind of power... wait wrong line.

This is an amazing feature but I see myself abusing it to fix meaningless typos and misspellings.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I don't see myself using this at all... I try to make emails as formal as paper letters generally if it has to do with work so I'm already paying close attention. And if its between a good friend and I, it defaults to Facebook or skype so...

*shrug*

 

[JagerBombastic]

It's a nice idea if not a little late to the party.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I for one am appalled that Google is dumbing-down e-mail for the casuals...

 

[Strazdas]

Thats quite.. .nice? There were a few insta-regrets for me. mostly by accidentally clicking send mid-sentence or accidentaly sending empty message or forgetting to type in the subject/attaching files. like imagine an email saying "im sending you attached file X" and no attachments are there.

but for some reason I find it easier to notice an error when the message is presented in plain text than when it is still in the text box.

Same here. hence i started using the preview function. I guess our mind somehow has different tracks for reading a post and writing one.

 

[Recusant]

Well, that does it. That was the last feature missing. I told myself the similarities were too blatant, that sooner or later someone else was going to notice. But they got complacent, and now they've gotten lazy.

It may not happen to you, but someday, in the not-too-distant future, you'll be using a Google product and the shoddily-attached label will fall off, and you'll know. And you'll think to yourself...

"Let's see here... Where have I seen this before... service provider... limiting service capabilities on anything that isn't its web client... also an ISP, in some areas... wants everything to be tied to (or used through) its client software with a single user and password profile... How did I not see this sooner?

Google is, in fact... America Online.

 

[Viper1265]

This would have been useful a few moths ago when I accidentally hit send instead of attaching my resume.

 

[TallanKhan]

So, what Gmail is calling "undo send" is in fact just a 20 second time delay in sending emails? How ground-breaking.