Everyone makes mistakes, some are just more embarrassing than others. Take for example, accidentally sending an email venting about your in-laws to your in-laws, when you meant to send it to your spouse (for the record, I’ve never done this and I love my in-laws). While that scenario may have once led to an awkward family dinner, it might not anymore, thanks to Google’s new magical “undo send” option in Gmail.

The New York Times reports that after years of experimenting, the tech company has finally formally added an option that allows users to call back blunder-worthy emails.

Undo Send – which was previously available in Gmail’s “labs” section – allows people using Gmail to cancel a sent email if they have second thoughts immediately after sending, Google said in a blog post on Monday.

The new tool works by delaying the sending of an email for a pre-set amount of time anywhere between five to 30 seconds. During this delay, users can then click the link to undo the scheduled send if they see errors or realize they were on the brink of committing email disaster.

While formally adding the tool to the main settings panel makes it more readily available for Gmail users, the feature is automatically set to default, Google says. That means to actually take advantage of the undo send option, users must enable it by going to the general tab in Gmail settings.

Gmail Formally Adds ‘Undo Send’ Option [The New York Times]
Undo Send for Gmail on the web [Google]

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