How to snooze emails in Gmail, and when a follow-up reminder is better
Updated
Short answer: On a computer, point to the email, click Snooze on the right, and choose a day and time; on your phone, open the email and tap More, then Snooze. It leaves your inbox, waits under Snoozed, and comes back to the top at that time. Snooze suits email you’ll act on later; for email you’re waiting on someone to answer, a follow-up reminder that checks for a reply is better.
Snooze is Gmail’s “not now”: the email disappears until the time you pick, then comes back to the top of your inbox. Used for the right kind of email, it keeps the inbox down to what you can act on today.
Snooze an email on your computer
- Point to the email in your inbox.
- Click Snooze, the clock on the right.
- Choose a later day and time.
To snooze several at once, select them and click Snooze at the top (or More, then Snooze). With keyboard shortcuts on, in Settings → See all settings, pressing b snoozes the email you’re on.
On your phone
Open the email, tap More at the top right, then Snooze, and choose a time. You can also make a swipe snooze: on Android, under Settings → General settings → Mail swipe actions, and on iPhone, under Settings → Inbox customizations → Mail swipe actions. With Gmail’s notifications on, your phone tells you when a snoozed email comes back.
Where snoozed email goes
Snoozed email waits under Snoozed in the left sidebar (Menu, then Snoozed, on your phone), and searching in:snoozed finds it too. At the time you chose, it returns to the top of your inbox.
Snooze it to the day it matters
“Tomorrow” is the easy choice and often the wrong one. Snooze an email to when you can act on it: the morning it’s due, the hour before your meeting with that person, or the afternoon you’ve kept free. An email that comes back on the wrong day just gets snoozed again.
When a follow-up reminder is better
A common trick is to snooze your own sent email so it comes back in a few days, as a reminder to check whether they replied. It works, with two catches: it comes back whether or not they answered, so you still open the thread to check, and it only works for the emails you remembered to snooze when you sent them.
Gmail’s nudges help here. In Settings → See all settings → General, next to Nudges, “Suggest emails to follow up on” brings sent emails without a reply back to the top of your inbox (it needs conversation view on). Google described them in 2023 as showing up after about three days. Gmail decides which emails get nudged, though, so treat them as a safety net rather than a reminder you set.
Which to use
| Snooze | Gmail nudges | A follow-up reminder | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Email you’ll act on later | Catching what slipped | Email you’re waiting on |
| Who picks the time | You | Gmail | You, or a sensible default |
| Knows if they replied | No: it comes back either way | Yes: it suggests sent email with no reply | Yes: it only comes back if they haven’t |
Questions people ask
Where do snoozed emails go in Gmail?
Under Snoozed, in the left sidebar on a computer or the menu on your phone. Searching in:snoozed finds them too, and each one comes back to the top of your inbox at the time you chose.
What’s the keyboard shortcut for snooze in Gmail?
b, once keyboard shortcuts are on in Settings → See all settings. g then b opens your snoozed emails.
Can Gmail remind me if someone doesn’t reply?
Not on a date you set. Nudges may bring back sent emails without a reply after a few days. For a reminder you control, snooze your sent email to the day you want to check, or use an app that notices when nobody replied, like Lowtide.
Sources
What this guide says about other products and research comes from these sources, checked on the date above.