Being able to delete emails on Gmail when the undo button doesn’t work

[icantchoosee]

Hi Everyone!

Hope you’re all having a great day! I’m new to this community and not sure how to submit feedback. I joined the feature ideas program but haven’t been accepted so I thought I’d feature my ideas on here right now.

Just to confirm, Google Workspace is consider Gmail as well? Even for personal use because that’s what I was hoping to talk about.

So my ideas are to make a way so that whether you sent the email a month ago, a day ago or even a year ago. You’re able to undo the email, like delete it. I was scrolling through the community support pages for google and a lot of people complained about how the undo button disappears too fast or doesn’t always work because you could tap anywhere on the screen and the undo button would disappear. Or they regret sending that email but they sent it a day ago and there’s no way to undo the email now. I definitely had these problems, I’ve sent emails where I’ve regretted especially when they contained personal information and they other user doesn’t respond back. I’ve tried contacting google to ask if I could delete it but they said that after it’s been sent, there’s no way to undo it and they can’t undo it for us. So, I think we should add a way so that we can either undo emails ourself or we can contact google, so that they can do it for us. This would be a huge change to Gmail and would definitely make users experience a lot better.

I also think we should add a read receipt. Like many social media apps, you’re able to see if someone has seen your message which I absolutely love. Do you ever hate it when you send a email and no one responded? I always wonder if the email is inactive or they just saw it and doesn’t want to respond. I think this would be a great update as we won’t have to stress over receiving replies or spam the other person with countless amount of emails because they won’t respond.

[chris_barrow4]

@icantchoosee The "Undo" button is actually a delayed send, the time delay on this can be changed within your Gmail settings. Being able to delete/recall emails that you previously sent people is not an easy ask, the reason for this is that if this goes to someone external to your domain, the email will reside on someone else's mail server. Once it has been sent, Google is not able to recall this message.

There are GMail Add on's that allow you to track if an email has been opened, much like marketing platforms. They do this by inserting code into the email you send.

[icantchoosee]

I understand. A lot of people have told me about these gmail add on, for example mailtrack.io, I just don’t want to risk them being able to have access to my email address and password. 

I also think it would be a lot better to be able to delete emails even after being sent. I understand even google isn’t able to do it with us but I know many people have sent embarrassing things or to the wrong email address after the “undo” button disappeared. I really wished this was an option, if they ever do come out with this option in the future, I would honestly be overjoyed.

[cryptochrome]

Don't get your hopes up. It's technically impossible to do it, unless the entire Internet and everybody connected to it would decide it's time to replace the underlying technology that is used to transport email. Which is not going to happen.

Think of it like sending a letter. Once it has arrived in the postbox of the recipient, there is no way for anyone other than the recipient to pull it out. 

Your best option is to read all your emails twice before you send them. 

[StephenHind]

@icantchoosee yeah the idea of someone other than me being able to delete emails from my account isn't something anyone wants. Just imagine how that could be abused! It would be a while new type of virus/malware/ransomeware/threat all rolled into one!

No mail service is going to allow external parties to delete content off its servers.

Everyone has said something they later regret: it's the same with email just in written form.