Introduction
Snooze emails is a Gmail feature that reminds us to handle emails that we don't have time to read or respond to when they were initially received.
For example, many mornings people start off their day by checking their emails and working their way through the dozens of emails received since the day before. In order to help keep yourself on task, you might not want to actually send a response to every email that needs one, especially those that will take longer to respond to. A better option would be to snooze the important emails to make sure they then resurface later in the day when you have the time and mental capacity to craft an appropriate response.
This is an intriguing feature that allows us to schedule a convenient time to read our important emails, rather than interrupting our current task or having to remember to go back and respond.
In this article, we will learn a bit more about what it means to snooze emails, the benefits of using Gmail's snooze feature, and how to snooze an email on both desktop and mobile clients.
What is Snoozing?
Snooze is a Gmail feature that allows us to temporarily remove an email from our inbox and schedule it to reappear at a later date/time. This is especially useful if we are drowning in emails but need to remember to return to certain important messages later. Let's first take a look at some advantages and then understand how it works.
Advantages of Snoozing Emails
It's generally bad for productivity to be constantly distracted by email. There are numerous advantages to snoozing emails in Gmail, a few of which we've laid out here:
- Snoozing an email allows us to handle reading or responding to an email at a more convenient time
- We can specify the time and date that works better for us to go through the snoozed emails
- Snoozing an email makes it reappear in your inbox, as opposed to relying on you to remember to revisit an email you received earlier
- Many people (as well as automated emails like newsletters) send email around the same time of day, like in the morning. The snooze feature can be used to help spread out the number of email you have to go through at one time. For example, if you typically receive 30 emails in the morning, you can snooze 15 of them to reappear in the afternoon once you've had time to work through more important tasks.
Note: Make sure you're only snoozing emails when you are too busy to properly handle them and they require more of your attention. If you snoooze every email, then it defeats the purpose and you'll be in the same predicament when all of the snoozed emails inevitably resurface.
How to Snooze Emails in Gmail on Desktop
Of course, in order to snooze emails in Gmail, you'll need a Gmail account. If you don't already have one, you can easily create an account for free.
Once that has been settled, we can now get started with snoozing emails in Gmail. Here are the steps to do so on desktop:
Login to your Gmail account by visiting Gmail.com, so you can be directed to your Gmail inbox, just as shown in the image below:
After that, hover your mouse cursor over the email you want to snooze in order to find the snooze option. Once you're hovering over the email, four icons will appear on the right side of the specified email. Click on the snooze icon, which is the last icon on the right side, as shown here:
Once that has been done, a popup box of options will appear:
The snooze popup box contains the list of suggested dates and times to snooze your email. The last option in the list, "Pick date & time", allows you to actually choose the date and time in which the email will reappear. All other options provide pre-determined times relevant to the current day/time.
After you have clicked on the most convenient time to receive the specified email, you're done! You have successfully snoozed your email. It'll then reappear in your inbox at that specified time, unless you "unsnooze" it earlier.
Snoozing Multiple Emails on Desktop
If you're busy and have quite a few emails to go through, it could take a while to individually snooze every important email in your inbox. Luckily Gmail provides a convenient feature that allows you to snooze multiple emails at once.
To snooze multiple emails, check the box on the left side of the emails you want to snooze and then click the snooze button at the top of your inbox, which is highlighted in red, as shown in the image below:
All of the selected emails should then disappear and later reappear at the same snooze time.
Finding your Snoozed Emails
Let's say you have snoozed an email, but you then need to find it before it's scheduled to resurface in your inbox. The email isn't just gone until it's scheduled time, Gmail provides a way to find these emails whenever you need.
To locate these emails, all you have to do is click on the "Snoozed" button on the left side of your page, as shown in the screenshot below, and all of your snoozed mails will appear, along with the time we set:
How to Unsnooze Emails on Desktop
So far, we've seen how to snooze emails and then locate them. However, situations may arise that require us to unsnooze a specific mail, such as if we accidentally snoozed the wrong mail. This is as simple as reversing your previous steps.
First you need to click the checkbox for the specific email within the Snoozed folder and click on the Snooze button.
After that, we will be prompted with a popup box, as shown below. Unsnooze the selected email or all selected emails by clicking "Unsnooze":
How to Snooze Emails on a Mobile Device
We've already seen how to snooze emails on a desktop, so let's see how we can do it on a mobile device as that's where much of our email interaction takes place. This is especially important because it can be difficult to craft a proper response to certain emails on your phone, so you might want to snooze the email until you get back to your laptop/desktop.
The first step is to select the email you want to snooze and then click the menu button in the top-right corner of your screen:
Once you have done that, click on the "Snooze" button:
Finally, a popup box will appear on our screen. This popup modal displays a list of possible times and dates to snooze our email. Again, the final option, "Pick date & time", allows you to choose a convenient date and time to receive the snoozed email. Choose the best time for you to re-receive the specified email.
Congratulations, your email has been successfully snoozed from your mobile device!
Finding All Snoozed Emails on Mobile
To locate all of your snoozed emails on mobile, click on the menu button on the top-left side of your page, shown here:
Once that is done, click on the "Snoozed" button to view the snoozed emails:
In this folder, you'll find all of the emails that are currently snoozed. Here you can also unsnooze emails, as you'll see in the next section.
How to Unsnooze Emails on Mobile
Performing this task is very similar to how it's done on a desktop - all we have to do is access all our snoozed emails by clicking on the menu button on the top-left side of your inbox page and then click on Snoozed folder, just like we did in the previous section.
Again, select the email(s) you want to unsnooze and then click on the options button at the top-right corner of your screen:
You will be presented with a dropdown list after clicking the menu button. Unsnooze the selected emails by selecting the "Unsnooze" option from the menu.
Conclusion
In this article, we learned how to snooze emails in Gmail for both mobile and desktop screens, as well as how to unsnooze emails and the benefits of why you'd want to snooze emails in Gmail. We hope you found this article useful!
