How Do I Schedule an Email Response?
How many people are still using AOL Mail? I assumed they were all three, but apparently many of you are still clinging to your aol.com accounts. Are you hoping that one day AOL will be reborn? Are you nostalgic for the sounds of a dial-up modem? Do you hate Gmail? You can move providers ; everything will be fine.
In this week’s Tech 911 column, we tackle a question that has its roots in AOL Mail, but applies to anyone who has ever experienced this kind of panic when they accidentally sent an email before it was ready (or without typos. ).
Lifehacker reader Mike writes:
“In the past, AOL offered the ability to write an email and then postpone sending it. In other words, you can compose an email, but it doesn’t have to be sent until a certain time the next morning, when the specified email sender takes an action. Does AOL Mail offer this feature? Are there other providers? “
Delayed (or Scheduled) Send is one of the best features any email service provider, web app, or mobile app has to offer. I can’t count how many times Gmail’s built-in delayed send feature (which you can set up here under the Undo Send section) has saved me. When you turn it on, Gmail adds an automatic delay of up to 30 seconds, giving you a small window to cancel the message if you suddenly realize you’ve made a catastrophic mistake.
The problem with this feature – and I’m also adding the concept of “scheduled emails” here, which allows you to set a specific time when you want an email to be sent, is that it all depends on how you access a specific postal service.
For example, Undo Submit works great in the web version of Gmail, but you can’t access this feature if you’re using the Gmail app (at least not when I wrote this column). It’s the same with the “deferred” and “scheduled” features of Outlook — they work great in desktop apps, not online or mobile apps.
There are apps that come with a delay or on a scheduled mailing out-of-the-box, and you should be able to use them to send and receive messages from most major email services. Try playing Spark (for iOS) or MailDroid (for Android), which make it easy to schedule emails at any time.
You can also choose a browser extension to enable this feature (or even a better version) for the email services you already use. Boomerang , for example, is an incredible extension for Gmail (or Outlook ) that adds a lot more functionality beyond the simpler undo functionality of scheduling emails rather than just delaying. If you’re lucky, Google will eventually build such a feature right into Gmail, but if not, the extension is your best bet.
Lifehacker Readers: Do you have any favorite apps, services, or extensions that you use to schedule emails? Let us know in the comments!