900 million Gmail users can now recall a email within 30 seconds!

900 million Gmail users can now cancel the delivery of an email within 30seconds of hitting the send button.

Google has announced that a new feature on Gmail will delay delivering emails, thereby allowing the sender to think first, or cool down, and stop the message from being sent should they change their mind.

“Previously a popular feature in Gmail Labs, and recently added to Inbox by Gmail, today we’re adding ‘Undo Send’ as a formal setting in Gmail on the web,” Google explained.

How many times you have send an email stating that you have attached something but failed to attach the item before sending the mail.

The “Undo Send” feature is most welcome since many people nowadays have a horror story or two when it comes to sending email messages. It might be a spur-of-the-moment scathing message to a boss, or a blunder with a wrongly-pressed “Reply to All” button. There are even email senders who reply to a spam message. Wrongly sent messages tend to embarrass the sender, and email users wish there was some way to delay the step and give them control over the sending process.

Now for a thinking person, Google is making it easier to steer clear of the trouble that can be caused by a misdirected or inappropriate email.

This feature will also be included in its Inbox app. Inbox is a mobile app for iOS and Android that keeps users’ emails organised by highlighting important emails with “Featured” status in the Web-based app.

An option to cancel the delivery of an email within 30 seconds of hitting the send button is now a standard safeguard in Google’s Gmail as part of a settings change made this week.

Although the ‘undo send’ feature had already been available for the past six years in Google’s experimental labs, but that required Gmail users taking extra steps to get it.

Gmail accountholders will now have to activate the protection in Gmail’s settings. The tool delays the delivery of emails from five to 30 seconds after the send button is pressed to give users a transient chance to retrieve an email mistakenly sent to the wrong person or an ill-conceived communication.

Google inserted the ‘undo send’ feature last month into an email management application called ‘Inbox’ designed for mobile devices.

Gmail, started 11 years ago, is the far more popular email service than any other email.