Oh god, how can I unsend that email!?
I know you clicked on this article because you’ve been there and you want something in your back pocket in case you’re ever there again.
You sent a personal email that you immediately regretted, or a business email that you looked back on and it’s incoherent, or you were talking trash about the very person you accidentally cc’d. Whatever the reason, breathe a sigh of relief because unSend.it says they have a way to fix this for you.
unSend.it allows you to unsend that “oh shit” email. You hit up their website, set up your account- wham bam! That’s all it takes. Yes, you can keep your regular email address. No special email needed.
So how exactly does this work?
Doesn’t Gmail have an unsend button already that you can enable in your settings? Well, Gmail does have that button but you only have a few seconds to undo it before the opportunity is lost.
unSend.it works even after the email you sent has been opened. Here are the finer details straight from the horse’s mouth, “unSend.it removes all content from the body of the email (including any attachments) you sent. The email itself will always remain in your recipient’s inbox along with the subject line – however, all email message content will be removed.”
But is it erased forever? Kind of…
So it’s not exactly erased forever, it just allows you to erase the body of the email. Your recipient can still see that you sent an email. Which means you might still have some explaining to do with unSend.it. There are definitely some kinks to work out before this service will be enticing to the masses.
I don’t know what kind of voodoo they use to make this happen (something about exploiting image files to delete the body of the email) but I’m glad it exists. They’re launching very soon, the middle of this month and it’s a free service. So, hit them up if you’re in need of what unSend.it likes to call “regret free emailing.”
Make sure to check out their hilarious Twitter page too. They retweet mortified people on Twitter begging humanity for an unsend button and the hilarious reasons why they need it. Now, if only we could have an unsend button for all our drunk text messages.
#UnsendIt
Emily Crews is a staff writer at The American Genius and holds a degree in English from Western Kentucky University. Reading, music, black coffee, and her two little girls rule her life. She sees herself one day running a tiny bookstore at the end of the Earth. In the meantime, she is thrilled to write for AG and also does copy editing (team Oxford comma) to keep her brain from turning to mush.
