Google Adds Five-Second “Uh-Oh” Delay to Gmail

mod_sendcancelingA small but welcome feature should be in the Labs section if you use Google’s Gmail service. It’s called “Undo Send”, or as I like to call it: the “Uh-Oh” function. Once enabled, you’ll have a five-second window to stop a message from leaving after you hit the Send button. I tested it late last night between my two Gmail accounts and it worked flawlessly.

You do need a good reaction time since you only have five seconds to click the “Undo” button after hitting “Send,” but I like the amount of delay. It’s not too short so as to make the feature unusable, but it’s not long enough to seriously impact your productivity speed.

Ideally, I’m hoping to see a true mail recall feature in the not-too-distant future. That might be challenging for an email system as vast as Gmail. It also could be tricky once mail floats beyond the confines of Google. Why not enable it in small pockets at first?

I’m thinking of starting in Google Apps for Domains accounts, like the one we use here at GigaOM. Any mail sent to the internal GigaOM.com mail accounts would be a great place to start. After that, perhaps it could be applied to any mail sent between two Gmail accounts. It’s not often that I need to do a full recall, but it’s nice to know the feature is there when you need it. For now, I’ll have to hone my skills and hand-eye coordination with “Undo Send.”

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