How to Change Undo Sending Delay on Mail for iPhone & iPad

One of the better new features in modern versions of Mail for iPhone and iPad is the ability to undo the sending of an email, which offers you a grace period to retract an email before it gets sent out. This is nice when you forgot something to include in the email, caught a typo right when you hit send, or perhaps want to change what you wrote, amongst numerous other scenarios where you’d like to unsend an email.

Let’s review how you can change the amount of time that you can undo the sending of an email on iPhone or iPad. You’ll have options to turn unsend feature off, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, and 30 seconds.

How to Change Unsend Email Delay Time on iPhone & iPad Mail App

Want to have more (or less) time to unsend an email from Mail app in iOS or iPadOS? Here’s where you can make that change:

1. Open the “Settings” app
2. Go to “Mail”
3. Locate the Sending section, then tap on “Undo Send Delay”
4. Select from one of the following options: Off, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds



5. Exit out of Settings

Many users would benefit from the 30 seconds option, since it gives them a longer period of time to catch a mistake or error and to unsend the email. If you turn the feature off, then mail app simply behaves as it did prior to the the 16.0 releases, where there is no delay when sending an email, preventing the ability to unsend the email message.

It is important to note how this undo sending email feature functions. Basically, unsending email works by creating a delay between when the email send button is pressed, and when the email is actually sent. Thus if you choose 30 seconds, there’s a 30 second delay added to when you click on the send button to when the email actually gets sent out of your inbox. Undoing the sending of an email will not retract a sent message from someones inbox if they have already received it, or it has already left your outbox, that is simply not possible with email protocols. This makes the email unsend feature technically different from the unsending of Messages on iPhone or iPad, which quite literally will retract the message from the recipients Messages app, assuming they’re using a compatible iOS or iPadOS version (16.0 or newer).

Do you use the unsending features for undoing the sending of email or iMessages? What do you think of these features? Let us know your experiences and thoughts in the comments.