Have you ever sent an email, and just as it was going on its merry way, you realize you misspelled something or you sent it to the wrong person. This happens to me a lot on Gmail because sending an email is not always instant. And you have more chances to experience email regret as you are waiting for one to send.
Well, now you can take advantage of that delay to “undo” the message. (Not to be confused with Gmail Goggles, which is geared more at preventing drunken emails from ever being sent out in the first place). Just enable the feature in Gmail Labs in Settings (Scroll down, it is not at the top for some reason). It only works during that 5 second delay between the time you hit send and the time that Gmail actually sends the message.
What I like about this option is that it turns a bug into a feature. Gmail is really too slow, but now you can occasionally use that to your advantage.
I’d like to see a couple modifications to this. Why not have it so I can set a delay between when I hit send on a message and when it actually sends? If you are an impulsive emailer, you could add in a 30 second or 1 minute delay or even a 24 hour delay if you are so inclined…
Also, while they’re at it, why not add in timed emails? Let me write an email, but then set a timer so it sends at whatever time I want? That way I could craft up that letter quitting my job, but set it to send 24 hours after I write in just in case I have a change of heart…
second that
thanks gmail.. such things is what we expect from google.
Methinks discussing usability issues and improvements to existing “cool” services from startups in the comments section on this blog is a VERY GOOD THING (TM)
One place, a sure read, simple no-fuss layout, great ideas, moderators with integrity and libertarian leanings – lots of good things can happen. Hey how could we hack up a creole-style, de-facto convention-over-configuration markup standard right here, on this blog, for blog comments, for other blogs to pick up?
( Format … )
Vote sought for::
[idea: Add adjustable delay to gmail send;
myvote: insightful+1, interesting+0, infeasible+1,alreadydone+1, new-1;
oneline:i love this thing]
version 0.0.0.1, of course
Erick,
Gmail is slow, agreed..But that’s not a bug!
gmail isn’t slow unless you’ve turned on a bunch of the Labs features.
plain-vanilla gmail is still pretty darn quick for me.
Third that.
Fourth that!
Fifth that
Sixth that.
C-C-C-C-COMBOBREAKER!!!
FIRST!!!!!
+ Sixth that.
This would be relatively simple to implement but provide a truly big payoff for users.
“… This would be relatively simple to implement but provide a truly big payoff for users …”
Said from her high Throne the Super-Smart Guru “From India” — Coming from someone who has no clue and has done nothing of value in the IT field other than a lame, lame blog…
Get real retard spammer!
Second that. Twice. This idiot still *STILL* believes that her moronic comments contribute anything to Techcrunch. other than silly entertainment. Go away spammer “From India.” — Really, GO AWAY!
You just said what I wanted to say
These features might actually make GMAIL stand out of the crowd (though its already but a little more superior than others)
Very nice feature for people who are in hurry
Yeah!
Why not add a button “I might regret sending this, Please just ALMOST send the message” too?
cool feature saves you headache of having to resent it again if you mess up. techcrunch should have one of these
Five seconds really isn’t enough for me.
(that’s what he said?)
Since when was there a 5 second delay bug? This labs experiment ADDS a 5 second delay before sending to let you undo the sending. If it was using a bug that depended on the slowness of Gmail, it would be a relative time correlating to how fast your computer is, and not an explicit 5 seconds.
I am now having trouble making this work after I enabled it in Gmail. Is it just me, or are others having the same issue?
No, works for me.
Can the Techcrunch board add this feature? It’s really slow posting a message — would have plenty of time to undo.
Google punishes you for your lies that gmail is to slow. It’s faster than yahoo mail and way faster than live mail in my experience.
I never experienced a 5 second delay bug.
Sorry, just don’t understand why people complain about features they get for free and are experimental. If it doesn’t work, don’t use it! It’s not as if you have some kind of “right” to have things your way.
Better contact the gmail team directly to let them know what you think instead of posting negative feedback on the internet.
The reason is obvious.. it does not work for you because gmail is slow for you.
That is, since GMail is slow for you, your UNDO action does not reach the GMail servers before 5 seconds, after the SEND request had reached it.
Heh this is handy. Until now I have opted for the ol’ unplug the network cable trick.
‘gmail is really too slow’
Really? Feel like elaborating on that please, since blanket statements != journalism
The other day it took me like 5mins to load gmail, all day long. Sigh..
same , i always need to reload again or switch to basic html
I always thot gmail was faaaaaaaaaaaast.
Yes! I always thought so too, daddy…
It’s cool feature, a time adjustable delay would be better like upto 5 mins.
The delay is a feature they are introducing not a bug that is being exploited. This is according to the product manager at Google.
Ragy.
What would be way smarter is an undo feature that works no matter what the delay is, as long as the recipients also are on gmail.
That’s actually more and more the case! So why not let me undo an e-mail from gmail to gmail?
I was just thinking: Weren’t there some UNIX mail systems that did exactly that in the mainframe days? Delete sent mail as long as the recipient was on the same mainframe and hadn’t opened it yet?
Yes, there were systems that allowed you to delete as long as the recipient hadn’t read their copy yet. AOL mail was one too!
Really nice feature. Saves a lot of time. It would be more useful if “undo sent” was possible.
Awesome idea, but it would also help to just re-read your email first.
Ah,
The feature they should add (apart from a delay to the recall feature) is an attachment checker that looks for the word ‘attach’ or ‘attached’ or ‘attachment’ and prompts you if you haven’t attached one hehe
Unless that’s a joke that I don’t get, that feature already exists in labs:
Forgotten Attachment Detector
by Jonathan K
Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so
I love this too, but I wonder – isn’t 5 seconds too quick to decide whether to send or “undo”,
it looks like they already (kinda) add the option to extend the delay. go into settings > general. there is a drop down for ’send cancellation period’. right now the only options are 0 and 5 seconds though..
Remember AppleLink? “Unsend” was an option for messages sent to others on AppleLink…as long as they hadn’t opened the message naturally. I definitely used the feature and missed it when “real” email came around. I agree with Alain.
You said it “turns a bug into a feature.” I don’t understand. All bugs are already features…
When I have it on, I can’t add attachments!! Bizarre
this (plus an adjustable delay time), in addition to the “drunk email filter” are two more reasons why gmail kicks every other email service’s bootay.
Wow, this is one of some amazing features i like!
could google give more time for making the decision?
Gmail has always kept the good pace. Most probably because it is an open source and everyone is like developing something for google.
This feature wud be seldom used. And these kind of stuff should not be encouraged. Do it right the first time and even if you have mailed something wrong then 5 secs won’t be enough of a time period.
Exactly… How about just think before you hit that Send button? Too old-fashioned that we now need special features to help there?
A bit off topic, but does Techcrunch writers emply a similar button when writing about twitter or facebook? I am looking forward to seeing a reduction of posts about how facebook changing font colors on the main page or twitter changing margins on blue bulleted lists…
First of all gmail is very very slow. This feature is really for crazy googlers. Otherwise is 5 sec is really enough for you to find your mistake? This is just a show off.
Believe it or not, I remember AOL having the undo sent mail to another AOL user already in 1997 and I imagine they still do! If I remember correctly, you could undo unless the recipient already saw that it was in their inbox.
That’s a nice feature.
Last week by accident I sent an email to my boss that shouldn’t have been sent to him.
His first name is Bob as is the first name of my friend. I sent him this link!! NOT GOOD!
http://www.rich.../full_moon.html
You can’t possibly mean that 5 seconds of background task is too slow… can you?
Very nice innovation ! Everytime i send an email i forget the attachement… It’s going to change !
That’s cool!
I often forget to attached file before send.
Sounds good, i’ll try this feature..
Really useful feature/bug, more than often i just click away at the send button without thinking one extra time..
Great idea, poor execution. 5 seconds is just not enough IMO. Don’t see a reason why they can’t allow you to add your own cancellation send time.
Zoho mail already having this feature: see the below link
http://vjspace....o-or-later.html
are you guys serious??
Launch date: April 1, 2004
April fools day…
gmail launch date was april 1.
at first, everyone saw it as a good joke, but today, no one can live without it.
Thsi feature is really very helpful ,Gmail team always trying to push new features into gmail.This can be useful If I forget to send important info or documents I can undo the send email and send the required info again.
so now i have 5 seconds to think. i mean better than nothing. sometimes 5 seconds are good enough to undo your mistake
We all wanted to take back an email at some point or another. I think this is a great idea but I do agree with Chris that we should have some control over the time settings. I don’t think 5 seconds is a long enough delay. Some people may find their mistakes after 5 seconds so they’re going to have to resend the message (and that’s really annoying).
If it actually went through and you can tundo it, Just send the same to the same person with the same subject but with different message text over and over and over. Eventually the recipient you didnt mean to send it to will read the latest email, notice the other 20 are the same (or so it appears), think it’s a glitch and just delete the rest without reading each one (including, hopefully, the first one)
Ewwww Techcrunch…I really should check where digg is sending me. This site is pure tabloid trash. You people have no journalistic standards.
i know it’s not cool to acknowledge aol in any positive light, but i’ll risk ridicule: this is a feature aol mail has had for, oh, 10 years or more. it’s called “unsend”
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Hai
hi dis is gr8 service by gmail.how can we know that my mails r being readen. any bdy hve any idea
.catch me @ google
http://www.goog...699675803242895
“turns a bug into a feature” – great observation.
although google provide an undo button but double check the mail contents before sending it is more better to avoid any mistake
Thanks to Gmail, this is helpful!
This one is really a nice idea.It happens to me many times so i will try it next time
great job
I hope Google has a way of tracking how many people use this function just out of some uncontrollable OCD tendency. There have been plenty of moments when I would have liked to undo an email. For some reason all the errors in your message are realized the moment the email is out of your reach.
Cameron asked two questions he knew Brown could not answer. ,