How to Recall an Email in Gmail

Accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient is a stressful ordeal. Thankfully, you can set up safeguards to prevent something like that from happening.

Gmail has a feature called “undo send” that delays the sending of the email for a short time. During that delay, you have a few seconds to unsend the email. After sending it, you will see “Message sent” in the bottom left corner and the option to either unsend or view the message. Simply click “undo” and the message will be recalled.

Unfortunately, if you miss the delay window and the message gets sent, it is impossible to recall it. However, you can control how much time you have to undo the send. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Gmail and sign in.
2. Click the gear icon on the top right.
3. Go to “See all settings.”
4. Go to “Undo send.”
5. Select a send cancellation period. You can choose 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.
6. Click “Save changes” at the bottom.