Are you a night owl who hammers out email after email into the wee hours of the morning? Maybe you spring out of bed at 5 a.m. and start firing off messages to team members, or spend your Sunday night catching up on email before the week starts.
That’s great—for you. But there are probably some people on your team who would prefer not to deal with after-hours emails. Even if you say something can wait until morning, many feel compelled to answer right away.
Luckily, Google lets you schedule emails in Gmail, so you can cross things off your to-do list without bothering your coworkers outside of normal business hours. Here’s how to schedule an email in Gmail. The process works roughly the same on the web and in the iOS and Android mobile apps.
The obvious first step is to compose the email you need to send. Once the email has a recipient listed, the message can then be scheduled. You will notice that there is a drop-down menu next to the Send button at the bottom of the email window. Click it and choose Schedule send. Mobile users can access this option in the three-dot menu.
A pop-up box appears with several quick scheduling times if you want the email sent out tomorrow morning, this afternoon, or tomorrow night.
If none of those work, choose Pick date & time so you can pick a specific date on the calendar. You can specify the exact time and even schedule it for a different year.
View and Cancel Scheduled Emails
Once you choose a time and date, the email will immediately be scheduled. A new Scheduled folder will become visible in Gmail, displaying how many scheduled emails you have pending. Open this folder to see all your scheduled emails with dates showing when they will be sent out.
If you need to undo a scheduled email right away, Gmail presents a pop-up message that allows you to undo the scheduled email immediately after scheduling. Click Undo and the message will go back into drafts.
Otherwise, open the Scheduled folder, hover over the email in question, and click the trashcan icon to delete the email. To edit your message and reschedule, open the email and click Cancel send to put it back into drafts.
Mobile users can also long-press on the email in question and tap the arrow with the X to cancel and send to drafts (iOS users can also hit the trashcan icon to delete).
