Emails come in throughout the day — sometimes at really inconvenient moments. If you don’t have the time to deal with an email when it appears or if you want to get back to it later and you’re afraid you’ll forget about it, you can use Gmail’s snooze feature.
Snoozing an email means that it will disappear for a while and then come back to the top of your inbox at a time you pick, as though you’re receiving it all over again.
Here’s how to snooze your emails.
Snooze emails in your browser
- In your inbox, hover over the email that you want to snooze. You’ll see a row of icons on the right-hand side. Click on the one that looks like a clock.
- Alternatively, you can select the message or messages you want to snooze using the checkboxes and then click the clock icon that appears above the inbox
- You can also find the clock icon at the top of the screen when you open the email
- In any case, when you click the clock icon, you’ll see a drop-down list of suggested times. Click on whichever one best suits you.
- If none of the times shown fit when you want to receive the message, you can click on “Pick date & time” at the bottom of the drop-down menu to set your own. A pop-up window will open. Once you’ve chosen your time and date, click “Save.”
- The email will disappear from your inbox and will reappear at the top at the time you’ve chosen
- If you want to be reminded about which emails you’ve snoozed, you can access them by clicking “Snoozed” on the left-hand side under “Inbox”
- To undo a snoozed email, open it in the Snoozed folder and click “Unsnooze” at the top of the screen
Snooze emails in the mobile app
These instructions are for an iPhone, but the steps for Android are similar.
- Open up the Gmail app
- Open an email and tap the three dots in the right-hand corner of the screen (not the message)
- Alternately, if you don’t need to read it first, you can press and hold the message in your inbox until you see a check, and then tap the three dots in the top right-hand corner. You can do this to several messages at once if you want to snooze them at the same time.
- Select “Snooze” at the top of the menu that appears
- Choose one of the suggested times in the pop-up window or tap “Pick date & time”
- Set the date. Then, tap “Time” followed by “Custom...” to choose the time you receive it. Tap “Next” when you’re done.
- Tap “Save” in the top-right corner (for iPhone) or “Save” in the bottom-right corner (for Android)
- All of your snoozed emails are in the Snoozed folder, which you can access by tapping on the three bars on the left side of the search bar at the top of the inbox
- To unsnooze a message, go to the Snoozed folder, open the message, tap the three dots in the top-right corner of the screen, and then tap “Unsnooze”