How to Schedule an Email in Gmail (Desktop, iPhone, and Android)

You finished the email at 11:40 at night, or your recipient is eight hours ahead of you, and you don't want it landing at a strange hour. Gmail can hold it and send it later. You don't need an add-on.

On a computer, click the small arrow next to Send and choose Schedule send. In the Gmail app on iPhone or Android, tap the three-dot menu at the top of the compose screen and choose Schedule send. Then pick a suggested time or set your own. The email waits in a Scheduled folder until it goes out, and Google sends it from its servers, so your laptop can be closed and your phone can be off.

That's the short answer. The rest of this guide covers each platform step by step, then the details that trip people up: the cap on scheduled emails, how editing works, which time zone Gmail uses, and what scheduling does to email tracking.

How to schedule an email in Gmail on a computer

1. Click Compose and write your email as usual, with recipients, subject, and body.
2. Next to the blue Send button, click the down arrow (More send options).
3. Click Schedule send.
4. Pick one of the suggested times, or click Pick date & time.
5. If you picked your own, choose the date on the calendar, type the time, and click Schedule send.

The email moves to the Scheduled folder in the left sidebar until it goes out. Replies work the same way: open the thread, click Reply, and use the arrow next to Send.

These are the steps in Google's Schedule send help page. Google launched the feature in 2019.

How to schedule an email in Gmail on iPhone or iPad

1. Open the Gmail app and tap Compose.
2. Write the email.
3. Tap More (the three dots) at the top right.
4. Tap Schedule send.
5. Choose a suggested time, or tap Pick date & time and set your own.

To find it later, tap the menu (three lines) at the top left and choose Scheduled. The iPhone and iPad version of Google's help page has the same steps.

How to schedule an email in Gmail on Android

The Android app works almost exactly like the iPhone app:

1. Tap Compose and write the email.
2. Tap More (three dots) at the top right.
3. Tap Schedule send and choose a time, or Pick date & time.

The Scheduled folder is under the menu at the top left. See the Android version of the help page if your screen looks different.

How to edit or cancel a scheduled email in Gmail

There's no "edit scheduled email" button. Changing anything, even one typo, takes three steps:

1. Open Scheduled and click the email.
2. Click Cancel send. The email turns back into a draft.
3. Make your changes, then schedule it again with the arrow next to Send.

To cancel for good, do step 2 and then delete the draft. If you forget the last part of step 3, the email sits in Drafts and never goes out. That's the most common way a scheduled email gets lost: someone cancels to fix a link, edits it, and closes the window without rescheduling.

The limits Google doesn't put up front

The 100-email cap only matters if you're using Schedule send as a queue for outreach. If you are, you're probably at the point where a mail-merge or campaign tool is the better fit anyway.

Time zones: the detail that causes the most mistakes

Google's help page says scheduled emails "will be sent based on the time zone you schedule them in." In practice, that means two things.

First, Gmail doesn't know your recipient's time zone. If you're in Chicago and want an email to reach someone in London at 9:00 AM their time, you have to do the math and schedule it for 3:00 AM Chicago time (the gap shifts by an hour for a few weeks a year, because the US and UK change their clocks on different dates).

Second, travel doesn't move your scheduled emails. If you schedule something for 9:00 AM while you're in San Francisco and then fly to New York, it still goes out at 9:00 AM San Francisco time, which is noon where you are now. If the timing matters, check the time shown in the Scheduled folder after you land.

Does email tracking work with Gmail's Schedule send?

This depends on the tracker, so test yours before you rely on it. Trackers that work inside Gmail's compose window usually add their tracking pixel at the moment you click Send. Schedule send is a different button in a different menu, and not every tracker hooks into it.

We'll be direct about our own: the Maildriply Chrome extension doesn't track emails sent with Gmail's built-in Schedule send. The extension takes over Gmail's main Send button and the Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac) shortcut. That's where it adds the per-recipient pixel. Schedule send lives in the "More send options" menu, which the extension leaves alone, so the email goes out through Gmail exactly as written, without a pixel. The same is true for anything you schedule from the Gmail mobile app, where the extension doesn't run at all.

If you want a scheduled email and open and click tracking, schedule it from the Maildriply web dashboard instead:

• Pick a time from the presets ("Tomorrow, 9 AM", "Next Monday") or set your own. The picker uses your local time zone and allows up to a year ahead.
• The email sends from your own Gmail account through the Gmail API, the same way any Maildriply send does, with tracking added for each recipient at send time.
• Until it goes out, you can reschedule it, edit it, or cancel it from the email's page without turning it back into a draft first.

The features page covers how the scheduler and send queue work, and the getting started guide walks you through connecting Gmail.

When does scheduling an email help?

Scheduling won't rescue a weak email. It helps in a few specific cases:

• Time zones. An email that arrives at 3:00 AM sits under everything that comes in before the recipient wakes up. Scheduling it for their morning puts it near the top.
• Late-night and weekend work. A client email sent at 11:40 PM on Saturday tells them when you work. You may not want to set that expectation.
• Big batches. Scheduling 80 one-to-one emails for exactly 9:00 AM Monday sends them as a burst, which is the pattern Google's sender guidelines warn against. Spread them out, or use a tool that paces sends per account. Our Gmail sending limits guide explains why.
• Planned follow-ups. You can write the follow-up while the context is fresh and schedule it for a few days later. Just remember to cancel it if they reply first, because Gmail won't do that for you.

The last point is a real risk with Gmail's Schedule send. A scheduled email has no idea a reply came in. Sending "just following up" to someone who answered yesterday looks careless.

How to pick a send time from your own open data

Published "best time to send" studies average millions of emails from senders who aren't you, sent to recipients who aren't yours. Your own history is a better guide, as long as you read it carefully.

If you already track your email, look back at the first-open times for 20 or 30 recent emails to the kind of person you're about to contact. Before you look for a pattern, throw out the opens that don't tell you anything:

• Opens within seconds of sending. Those are usually security scanners or prefetching, not people.
• Opens from Apple Mail users with Mail Privacy Protection. Apple loads images in the background whether or not anyone reads the email. We explain why in our post on Apple MPP and open rates.

Here's an illustrative example. Say your last 25 emails to agency owners show first opens like this, after filtering:

That points to arriving just before 7:00 AM their time, so the email is waiting when they check their inbox in the morning. It's a small sample and opens are approximate, so treat it as a starting point and recheck it after another 20 emails. A pattern in replies, if you have one, beats a pattern in opens every time.

In Maildriply, each email's page shows the first and last open time for every recipient, with bot, proxy, and prefetch opens flagged, and the dashboard filters those out of its counts. The analytics docs explain what's counted. For a deeper look at reading opens, see how Gmail open tracking works.

FAQ

Can you schedule an email in Gmail on your phone?

Yes. In the Gmail app on iPhone, iPad, or Android, write the email, tap the three-dot More menu at the top right, and tap Schedule send. Scheduled emails show up in the Scheduled folder under the app's menu, and you can cancel them from there.

Will a scheduled Gmail email send if my computer is off?

Yes. Once you schedule it, the email is stored in your Google account, not on your device, and Google's servers send it at the scheduled time. You can close the browser, shut the laptop, or turn off your phone.

Can the recipient tell an email was scheduled?

Gmail doesn't show the recipient anything that says the email was scheduled. It arrives like any other email, at the time it was sent. The only clue is the timing itself, such as an email that lands right on the hour.

Why didn't my scheduled email send?

First check the Scheduled folder. If it's still there, the time may not have arrived in the time zone you scheduled it in, or it's running a few minutes behind. If it's in Drafts, it was canceled, often by someone opening it to make an edit and not rescheduling it. If it's in Sent, it went out, and the problem is on the receiving side, so ask the recipient to check spam.

How do you schedule a recurring email in Gmail?

You can't. Gmail's Schedule send sends one email once. For a weekly email, schedule each one individually, keep a template to paste from, or use a tool built for recurring sends.

The short version

Use the arrow next to Send on desktop, or the three-dot menu in the app. Remember that editing means cancel, edit, and reschedule. Do the time zone math yourself, because Gmail uses yours, not theirs. If you track your email, check that your tracker covers scheduled sends, or schedule from the Maildriply dashboard so opens and clicks are recorded either way.