Gmail Schedule send at a glance
- Schedule send lets Gmail send an email you've written at a later date and time you pick.
- You can use it in Gmail on a computer or in the Gmail app on Android, iPhone, and iPad.
- A scheduled email waits in a list called Scheduled until it's sent.
- To change a scheduled email, you cancel it, which turns it back into a draft, and then schedule it again.
- Gmail sends it at your chosen time in the time zone you scheduled it in, sometimes a few minutes late.
How to schedule an email in Gmail on a computer
Click Compose at the top left of Gmail to start a new email.
Write your email, including the recipient, subject, and the message you want them to receive.
Click the arrow next to Send at the bottom left of the email.
Click Schedule send to choose when the email goes out.
Choose the date and time you want Gmail to send it, based on when the person is likely to read and act on it.
To schedule a reply the same way, click the arrow next to Send at the bottom of your reply.
How to schedule an email in the Gmail app
You can follow the same scheduling steps on Android, iPhone, and iPad.
Tap Compose in the Gmail app to start the email you want to send later.
Write the email, including who you're sending it to and what you want to say.
Tap More at the top right of the email.
Tap Schedule send to open the options for sending the email later.
Select one of the options for the date and time you want.
How to change or cancel a scheduled email
To find an email you've scheduled, open Scheduled in the left panel on a computer. If you're using the app, tap Menu and open Scheduled to find the emails waiting to go out.
You can't edit an email while it's scheduled. On a computer, open it and click Cancel send to turn it back into a draft before making changes. If you're using the app, open it and tap Cancel send to turn it back into a draft before making changes. Canceling stops the scheduled send without deleting what you wrote.
To change the time or the text on a computer:
Open Scheduled in Gmail's left panel.
Open the email you want to change.
Click Cancel send to return the email to a draft.
Make the changes you need to the email.
Click the arrow next to Send at the bottom left.
Click Schedule send to schedule the edited draft.
Select the new date and time for the email to go out.
To send it now instead of waiting:
Open Scheduled to find the email you want to send early.
Open that email.
Click Cancel send to stop its scheduled delivery.
Click Send to send the draft right away.
If you're changing the email in the app, tap Menu, then open Scheduled and the email you want to change. Tap Cancel send before making your changes. Then tap More and Schedule send to choose a new time.
A canceled email stays in Drafts until you send it or schedule it again. If you only want to stop it going out, you can leave the draft there.
Which time zone Gmail uses
Gmail uses the time zone you scheduled the email in. If you're writing to someone in another time zone, work out what their preferred arrival time is in your own time zone before choosing the time.
For example, to reach someone in Vancouver at 9 a.m. when you're scheduling from Toronto, choose noon. You're entering the Toronto time that matches the Vancouver time you want.
Gmail may send the email a few minutes after the time you picked. If you need it sent before a deadline at an exact minute, leave a little room instead of scheduling it for that minute.
What you can and can't schedule
- If you're emailing several people, add their addresses in the recipient, copy, or blind-copy fields as usual. If you have a personal Gmail account, Gmail can reject an email to more than 500 recipients or more than 500 emails sent in a day.
- If you're using mail merge, which gives each person on a list their own copy of an email, you can't schedule that mail merge.
- If you're attaching files in a personal Gmail account, the attachments can total up to 25 MB, and Gmail adds a larger file as a Google Drive link. When you attach a Drive file, Gmail checks whether the people you're writing to can open it and offers to change sharing.
- If you're scheduling many emails ahead of time, you can have up to 100 scheduled emails at once.
If a scheduled email didn't go out
- If you passed the scheduled time only a few minutes ago, open Scheduled again shortly to check whether the email is still waiting. Gmail can send a scheduled email a few minutes late.
- If you can't find the email, check Scheduled and Sent. If you don't find it in either place, open Drafts to look for an email whose scheduled send was canceled. Schedule or send the draft again if you still want it to go out.
- If you find the email in Sent but the person you wrote to says it never arrived, ask them to check their spam folder. You can also wait for a delivery error to learn whether Gmail couldn't deliver it.
- If you receive a message from Mail Delivery Subsystem, read the reason the email couldn't be delivered. The recipient's address might not exist. Another possible cause is an invalid address you've set up to send from in Gmail. Fix the address identified by the error before sending the email again.
How to send the same email every week or month
Schedule send sends an email once and has no option to repeat it.
You can save the message as a Gmail email template to insert the text into a new email each time. Templates work only on a computer, not in the Gmail app. Set up a Google Tasks reminder with a due date and notification for when you need to send it. This gives you reusable text and a reminder, but you still send or schedule each email yourself.
If you're comfortable writing code, a Google Apps Script with a time-driven trigger can send email automatically on a schedule. Triggers can run as often as every minute or as rarely as once a month. Their run time can vary slightly, so this option isn't a promise of delivery at an exact minute.
Schedule send vs. Undo send, Snooze, the vacation responder, and nudges
- Undo send gives you only 5 to 30 seconds to unsend an email you just sent by mistake, depending on your setting. A scheduled email can be canceled any time before it goes out.
- Snooze hides an email you received and brings it back to your inbox later. It sends nothing.
- The vacation responder automatically replies to people who email you while you're away. Use an out-of-office message when people writing to you need an automatic away reply. Schedule send is for an email you've already written, not for responding to incoming messages automatically.
- Gmail nudges are suggestions at the top of your inbox about emails you may need to reply to or follow up on. They send nothing. If you see a nudge, you still need to write and send the reply or follow-up.
dreamif.ai
Have the email written before you schedule it
Scheduling decides when an email goes out, but writing it is still the slow part. After you connect Gmail, dreamif.ai drafts replies and follow-ups in Gmail Drafts from the thread and earlier emails with that person. You can edit, send, or schedule each draft, and nothing sends until you approve it.