How to Schedule Gmail Messages to Be Delivered in the Future

Have you ever wanted to write an email in the morning and send it later, when you were away from your keyboard?

Well, a Gmail plug-in called Boomerang makes it super easy to schedule email messages for future delivery.

Maybe you want to send yourself a reminder via email two weeks from now, or maybe you want to schedule an email to send out this Monday so that you can pretend you’re in the office. Boomerang can help you with that.

Here’s how to get started.

First, you’ll need to download and install the plug-in, which is simple. Just visit boomeranggmail.com and click the giant red Install Boomerang button (you can’t miss it). Depending on which browser you’re using — it’s available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox — a pop-up or two will prompt you to accept the addition of the plug-in. After you’ve clicked through those, you’ll need only to restart your browser, and then you’re ready to go.

Now when you go to compose a message at Gmail.com, you’ll notice a Send Later option underneath the Send button. Send Later is what you’ll want to select after you’ve composed a message you’d like to schedule for later delivery. Clicking the buttonwill bring a pop-up with specific delivery options for date and time, and even some delivery templates like In 4 hours or In 2 days. There’s also an option to designate any email as a recurring message, which can be great for creating regular reminders for your future self or family members.

If you’re dialing in an exact time for the message to be delivered, you’ll need to click the Confirm buttonthat’s right below the date and time entry before it’s sent off to the Boomerang-Outbox.

Your Boomerang-Outbox is located on the left side of the Gmail Web page, mixed in with your other custom labels/folders — Personal, Work, and so on. If you open the Boomerang-Outbox, you’ll find every yet-to-be-sent, scheduled email, and the good news (especially if you’re prone to mistakes like I am) is that they’re still able to be edited anytime until they’re fired off. Just click the message you want to modify, and you’ll see options to Edit (to change the content of the email), Reschedule, Send Now or Don’t Send.

There you have it. Boomerang is a simple, useful tool for easily scheduling email messages. And while we’ve yet to hear any mention of an app that can schedule Gmail messages for the past, we’ll certainly have it covered for you if and when we do.

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