How to Send Expiring Emails with Gmail on iPhone & iPad

Have you ever wanted to send a confidential email, or an email that expires after a while? With Gmail for iPhone and iPad, you can easily do just that, choosing to send confidential emails that are passcode protected, and that expire in a set amount of time after they reach the recipients inbox. Additionally, the confidential emails can’t be forwarded, copied, or printed, or downloaded. Sound useful? Let’s see how this works in the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad.

If you’re an iOS or iPadOS user, chances are, you use the stock Mail app for sending and receiving emails. While Apple’s Mail app is fantastic for sending and receiving basic emails, it doesn’t offer advanced features like being able to send confidential emails. This is one of several reasons why some users switch to third-party clients like Gmail to use as their default email app, which is a popular alternative email app for the iPhone and iPad.

How to Send Confidential, Passcode Protected, & Expiring Emails with Gmail on iPhone & iPad

Before you get started, make sure you’ve installed the latest version of the Gmail app for iOS and iPadOS. Even if you don’t use a Gmail address, you can import your existing email accounts to Gmail and use them with the app, but of course most people will use a gmail account.

1. Launch the Gmail app on your iPhone or iPad and sign in with your account.
   
   
2. Head over to your inbox and tap on “Compose” located at the bottom-right corner of your screen to start composing a new email.
   
   
3. Type in your message and enter the email address you want to send it to. Now, tap on the triple-dot icon at the top-right corner of your screen.
   
   
4. Now, choose “Confidential mode” from the bottom menu as shown in the screenshot below.
   
   
5. This will take you to a dedication section for confidential emails. Here, you’ll be able to set the expiration time which is set to 1 week by default. Tap on “Expires in 1 week” to change this.
   
   
6. As you can see here, you have multiple expiry options to choose from. Select your desired expiry time and tap on “Done”.
7. In the same menu, you’ll have the option to switch between Standard passcode and SMS passcode which will be required by the recipients to access the email. These passcodes will be generated by Google. Once you’re done configuring the settings, tap on the tick mark at the top-right corner of your screen.
8. You’ll see a dialog box at the bottom indicating that it’s a confidential email. You can now send it when you’re ready.

There you go. Now you’ve learned know how to use Gmail app to send confidential emails from your iPhone or iPad. This feature also works with Gmail on the web, but obviously we’re focusing on Gmail for iOS and iPadOS here.

Confidential Mode is a feature that was first added to Gmail back in 2018, which served as a way for personal accounts to send messages that can automatically expire.

When the recipient opens a confidential email, they will not have options to forward, copy, print, or download the email. However, keep in mind that nothing stops them from taking a screenshot or photo of your confidential messages including the attachments. Also, people will still be able to copy or download your messages using third party programs, so it’s not completely impenetrable. Access to a confidential email can be revoked at any time, if needed.

Do you use a Mac as your primary computing device? If so you can use the Gmail web app on gmail.com to accomplish the same task.

As for the default Mail app on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can setup PGP encryption but that’s a completely different process and works very differently from confidential mode offered by Gmail. Check here if that intrigues you.

Do you plan on using confidential email mode on Gmail? Have you ever used this feature before, and what do you think of it? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.