Google has released a feature in Gmail that will let you schedule emails to be sent at a particular date or time in the future.
This is particularly useful of you’re working across different time zones, or if you want to avoid interrupting someone’s holiday.
It could also come in handy of you want to leave the office early but give the impression that you’re still working at your desk.
The new tool is expected to roll out worldwide over the next couple of weeks.
“We understand that work can often carry over to non-business hours, but it’s important to be considerate of everyone’s downtime,” said Jacob Bank, director of product management for Google’s G-Suite in a blog post .
“We want to make it easier to respect everyone’s digital well-being, so we’re adding a new feature to Gmail that allows you to choose when an email should be sent.
“Just write your email as you normally would, then schedule it to arrive in your recipient’s inbox at a later date and time.”
Google doesn’t require you to install updates, so the new feature should simply appear in your inbox in the coming days.
To use it, type out your email and then click the new arrow next to the blue “send” button. Then select “schedule send” and pick a date and time to fire off your message.
Scheduled emails will appear in a “scheduled” folder and you can edit or delete them any time before the deadline you’ve set.
Google has also updated Gmail’s “smart compose” tool, which uses AI to write your emails for you.
The service is now available in four new languages – Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese – on Android devices, with iOS coming soon.