A few weeks ago, Google unveiled a new Gmail feature that would allow customers to plan to send Schedule Delivery e-mail when using Gmail. The company used a gradual rollout for the new feature; some users could use it immediately, others had to wait days or weeks to get it. By default, all e-mails are delivered to the recipients immediately. Scheduling alters this by allowing you to select a specific time and date for delivery.
The scheduling may not appeal to the majority of home users, but it has some applications when it comes to business communications. Of course, home users can also use it, e.g. to send reminder e-mails that arrive on time.
Businesses can use it for announcements or to make sure that emails do not arrive in the inbox of another one late on the business day.
Note that the schedule feature may still be in use at the time of writing. Google plans to make it available to all Gmail users.
Schedule emails in Gmail
You’ll find the new option in Gmail by clicking the Write button and clicking the down arrow on the Send button below.
Note that you must add at least one recipient to enable the option; it is not necessary to enter a subject or enter text in the text. Note that you may want to compose the entire e-mail before you select the schedule option because you can no longer edit the subject or text after you set a scheduled date and time for the e-mail.
Gmail suggests three delivery rates, usually tomorrow morning or afternoon or next Monday, and an option to adjust delivery by specifying the date and time.
The Specify Date and Time menu displays a calendar and time selection. Gmail does not limit the current date; it allowed me to select dates in 2020 for delivery. While we can not imagine a reason to plan e-mails to be sent in years, it’s good that Google does not currently limit this feature.
All scheduled emails will be listed under the new Scheduled Emails folder. The folder is created when you schedule your first e-mail.
Tip: Enter: search in Gmail in: scheduled to jump to the folder.
It lists all scheduled emails, including recipients, subject, first few characters from the text, and the date they are scheduled.
There is no way to edit scheduled emails; You can, however, delete them and perform other actions such as move or mute. If you need to edit a scheduled email, you must cancel it to be moved back to the Drafts folder. There you can edit the e-mail and schedule it again for delivery.
Conclusion
Other e-mail services already support e-mail scheduling; The web version of Microsoft Outlook supports this, and the Outlook desktop client has supported it for more than a decade.
Thunderbird users can install the Send Later extension to incorporate e-mail scheduling options in the e-mail client.