How to Schedule Emails in Gmail to Send at a Later Time

Gmail lets you write an email now but delay sending it until a specific date and time you choose. This is useful for many situations: you might write a birthday message the night before but want it to arrive on the actual morning. You might write an email at midnight but not want to appear like you are working at odd hours. Or you may need to remind someone about an appointment the day before it happens.

Scheduling an email in Gmail takes about the same time as sending it normally. You write the email as you normally would, but instead of clicking the blue "Send" button, you click a small arrow next to it and choose "Schedule send."

Gmail gives you a few pre-set options — morning, afternoon, tomorrow morning — or you can pick any custom date and time you want. The email sits in a special "Scheduled" folder in your Gmail sidebar until it sends at the time you selected.

You can cancel or change the send time at any point before the scheduled time arrives. Go to the Scheduled folder, open the draft, and either edit it or click "Cancel send" to put it back in your drafts. This makes scheduled emails fully editable right up until they go out.

This feature works the same way whether you are using Gmail on a computer, iPhone, or Android phone — the steps are nearly identical on all platforms.