How to schedule an email in Gmail

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Back in April 2019, Google announced that Gmail would natively support email scheduling, and the feature became available on desktop and mobile about a month later. Gmail’s feature is perfectly easy to use, and it has a range of applications for scheduling work and personal messages. Maybe you’re trying to talk to someone in a different time zone, nag someone about an event, or you just want to remind your future self about something. If so, schedule an email.

To schedule a message via Gmail in a desktop web browser, follow these steps:

Compose a new email
Click the triangle next to the blue “Send” button
Click “Schedule send”
Select one of the suggested times, or click “Pick date & time” to customize when exactly you want the message to go out

The process is exactly the same in Gmail’s mobile app. But instead of clicking part of the send button, when composing an email, you have to click the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the screen. That’ll bring up the option to schedule a time.

Finding scheduled emails and canceling them is also easy. There’s a new “Scheduled” folder on desktop and mobile. Simply click on a message in the folder and click “Cancel send” in the top right of the window to stop a message from being sent. It’ll go right back to your drafts folder.

Update July 28th, 2021, 10:40AM ET: This article was originally published on May 6th, 2019; there are a few minor tweaks in the introduction, and some of the screenshots have been replaced to reflect changes in Gmail’s interface.

Update February 10th, 2021, 12:30PM ET: More minor tweaks in the introduction and an update to one of the scheduling instructions.