Tech giant Google will allow users to undo e-mails sent up to 30 seconds after hitting send, the Google apps team announced yesterday.
"'Undo send' allows a person using Gmail to cancel a sent mail if they have second thoughts immediately after sending. The feature is turned off by default and can be enabled from the General tab in Gmail settings," said Google.
The function will start rolling out this week and will be available to all users in two weeks.
The feature was officially enabled in 2009, as part of Gmail Labs, where experimental features are launched before full release. The original feature held e-mails for five seconds after the sent button was pressed.
"This feature can't pull back an e-mail that's already gone; it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the panic button," Michael Leggett, Google user experience designer, said in a blog post at the time.
People using the Labs version will have the setting turned on by default at launch.
It is unclear why it has taken the tech giant six years to implement the change as a formal function across all platforms. This update comes after the undo send function was enabled in Google's new standalone Inbox app, designed to help organise e-mail better, at Google's annual IO conference this month.
Other e-mail services that offer similar services include Inbox Messenger on iOS, Undo SMS on Android, and Microsoft Outlook's recall function.
Share