How to Schedule an Email on Gmail: Steps

How to schedule an email on Gmail on a computer

Gmail's built-in Schedule send works in the browser for personal Gmail and for Google Workspace accounts. You don't need an extension. The option only appears once the message has at least one recipient, so add the address first.

1. 1 Click Compose. If you're replying, open the thread and click Reply. A scheduled reply still goes into the same thread.
2. 2 Add the recipients, the subject and the body.
3. 3 Click the small downward arrow just to the right of the blue Send button.
4. 4 Choose Schedule send.
5. 5 Pick one of the suggested slots, such as tomorrow morning, or click Pick date & time and set an exact date and clock time.
6. 6 Click Schedule send to confirm. Gmail shows a short confirmation, and the message moves to the Scheduled folder in the left-hand menu.

Two things trip people up. First, the date picker uses your device's time zone. If you schedule while travelling, check that the time you pick means what you intend for the recipient. Second, Undo Send is a separate feature. The top Gmail answer in Google's results for this search says it holds a sent message for at most 30 seconds, so it can't delay mail by hours.

Can you schedule an email in Gmail on iPhone?

Yes. The Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and Android has the same feature in a different place. Write the message, tap the three-dot menu at the top right of the compose screen, tap Schedule send, and pick a suggested time or Pick date & time. The message goes into the same Scheduled folder you see on desktop, so you can schedule on your phone and cancel on your laptop.

Apple's built-in Mail app has its own Send Later function, and it works with a Gmail account added. But it runs through Apple Mail, not through Gmail's Scheduled folder. A message scheduled there won't appear in Gmail on the web until it's sent. If you switch between apps, schedule everything in one of them.

How to edit or cancel a scheduled email in Gmail

You can't edit a scheduled message where it sits. Open the Scheduled folder, open the message and click Cancel send. Gmail turns it back into a draft. Make your changes, then schedule it again with the same arrow next to Send. If you only wanted to stop it, delete the draft.

Be careful with replies. If the prospect writes back before your scheduled follow-up goes out, Gmail sends the follow-up anyway. No rule cancels a scheduled message when a reply arrives, so you have to check the Scheduled folder yourself. That's fine for a few one-off emails. Across dozens of open threads it's where things slip, and it's the main reason outreach teams stop scheduling follow-ups by hand.

Do scheduled emails send if your computer is off?

Yes. Gmail stores a scheduled message on Google's servers, not on your device. Once you've confirmed Schedule send and the message is in the Scheduled folder, you can close the browser, shut down the laptop or turn off your phone. Gmail still sends the message at the time you set.

There's one exception. If you schedule from the mobile app while you're offline, the message can sit in the app's Outbox until the phone reconnects and hands it to Google. Until then it isn't on the server and won't go out. Before you put the phone away, check that the message is in Scheduled, not in Outbox.

Why is my scheduled email not sending?

At the scheduled time, Gmail sends the message like any other. So anything that can block a normal send can block a scheduled one too. Check for the cause in this order.

Symptom	Likely cause	What to check
Message still in Outbox on mobile	It was scheduled offline and never reached Google's servers	Reconnect the phone and confirm the message moves to Scheduled
Message back in Drafts	Someone clicked Cancel send, perhaps on another device	Open Drafts, then reschedule
Sent at the wrong hour	The device's time zone differed from the one you meant	Compare your device's time zone with the recipient's and reschedule
Bounce notice after the send time	Invalid address, or the account hit Gmail's sending quota	Read the bounce code; quotas are per user over a rolling day
Sent, but the recipient never saw it	The receiving server filtered it, often over authentication or reputation	Check spf=, dkim= and dmarc= in the message headers

The quota case catches people who schedule a batch for the same morning. Every recipient in To, Cc and Bcc counts, and messages over the limit bounce. Our guide to Gmail sending limits, quotas and errors has the details.

How do I send a reminder mail, and which tool does it?

Gmail can delay a message, but it won't run a sequence for you. To remind yourself, Snooze a received message so it returns to the top of the inbox at a set time. Gmail's Nudges setting (Settings, General) can also bring back sent messages that haven't had a reply. To remind someone else, write the follow-up and schedule it. If you want follow-ups to go out on their own and stop when the person replies, you need an add-on.

Option	What it does	Where it stops
Gmail Schedule send	Sends one message, or one reply, at a set time	No recurrence, and it doesn't cancel when the recipient replies
Gmail Snooze	Brings a received message back to your inbox later	Only reminds you; it sends nothing
Gmail Nudges	Brings back sent mail that hasn't had a reply	A suggestion only; you still write and send the follow-up
GMass (Gmail add-on)	Its search listing names send later, recurring reminders, skipping weekends and automated follow-ups	Works inside your Gmail account, so Gmail's sending quota still applies

Whatever you schedule, send the reminder as a reply in the original thread. A new email with a fake "Re:" in the subject doesn't carry the thread headers, so the recipient's client won't group it with the earlier messages. The sales follow up email template collection has ten threaded examples.

Sales follow up email template you can schedule

Open the thread, click Reply, paste the text and schedule it for a working hour in the recipient's time zone. Keep it short and ask one thing:

Hi [first name], coming back to my note about [topic]. Is [specific problem] something your team is working on this quarter? If not, a one-word "no" is fine and I'll close the loop. [Your name]

Scheduling a follow up sales email by hand only makes sense for a few live conversations. Each message is a separate Gmail send. Nothing tracks who has already replied, so you have to clear the Scheduled folder after every answer. To pick the hour, see our notes on the best time to send cold emails.

Email prospecting: when Gmail scheduling stops fitting

Email prospecting means finding and checking addresses, then writing first to people who haven't contacted you. Gmail's Schedule send handles one message at a time. It has no prospect list, no per-recipient fields and no stop-on-reply. That's why prospecting usually moves into a sending setup tied to your own domain.

EmailFlow OS takes a different route here. It's an EmailFlow OS product for personalised AI video email. You record one video and upload it to EmailFlow OS, connect your own Brevo account and sending domain, and import your prospect list into EmailFlow OS. EmailFlow OS then creates a personalised version of that one recording for each recipient, not for each company. Every version is sent from your own inbox, through your Brevo account and your sending domain, not from a shared platform sender. You keep control of the domain, its DNS records and the Brevo account. The home page explains how personalised video email from one recording works.

Cold email deliverability: what decides it after you click send

Scheduling only decides when a message leaves. The receiving server decides where it's filed. It checks whether SPF lists the sending IP, whether a DKIM signature matches your domain, whether DMARC aligns with the From domain, and what your domain's reputation looks like. A batch sent in the same scheduled minute from a new domain is the kind of spike receivers notice. Our breakdown of what decides cold email deliverability covers each check.

What is a good email deliverability rate?

There's no official benchmark, and we don't quote one. It's more useful to separate two numbers. The delivery rate is the share of messages the receiving server accepts rather than bounces. Inbox placement is the share the receiving server files in the inbox instead of the spam folder. A message can be accepted and still filtered, so a high delivery rate says nothing about the spam folder. Email deliverability rate: delivery vs inbox explains how each is measured.

Questions people ask

? Can I see if a scheduled Gmail email was read?

Not through Schedule send. Gmail only offers read receipts on Google Workspace accounts, and an admin has to turn them on. Even then, the recipient can decline to send one. Personal Gmail accounts have no built-in read receipt. Our article on Gmail read receipts shows where the setting is and why receipts often don't arrive.

? Can I schedule a recurring email in Gmail?

No. Gmail's Schedule send fires once per message and has no repeat option. For a weekly or monthly message, you'd schedule each one by hand or use a Gmail add-on. GMass, for example, lists recurring reminders among its features. Any add-on that sends through your Gmail account still counts against your Gmail sending quota.

? Where do scheduled emails go in Gmail?

They go into the Scheduled folder in the left-hand menu, in both the web app and the mobile app. Each message there shows its planned send time. Once sent, it moves to Sent. If you click Cancel send, it goes back to Drafts. If you can't see the Scheduled folder, it may be collapsed under More in the left-hand menu.