The snooze function is an absolute godsend, but it didn’t seem possible to change Gmail snooze times… until now!

A duotoned dark purple and beige version of the Apple alarm clock emoji, in front of a blue zig zag shape across the bottom of the image

Change Gmail snooze times

I just discovered that you can edit these by going into your Google Keep settings: updating there will change in both places.

By default, Gmail (and Keep) offer three default times:

  • Morning — 8am
  • Afternoon — 1pm
  • Evening — 6pm

So what if you’re an early riser? Or prefer your snoozed emails stay put until after after you’ve had your morning coffee? What if the last opportunity to check on work emails is actually around 5pm? Or if you usually get home from work after 7pm, and want the snoozed emails to re-appear after that?

Well, you can customise these times to your heart’s (and schedule’s) content.

Here’s a short (4min) video runthrough on how to do it:

The basic steps are:

  1. Go to Google Keep
  2. Change the default reminder times via the Google Keep settings page
  3. Providing you use the same email to login to Google Keep, the Gmail snooze options will now use these default times too!
Google Keep settings menu
Head over to Google Keep
Google Keep snooze options showing 8am, 1pm and 6pm as the reminder defaults
Change the default reminder times…
Gmail snooze options showing 7am tomorrow, next Tuesday or next Saturday
…and these will automatically apply in Gmail too!

A quick plug for Inbox Zero

The snooze feature is something I use in tandem with labels in Gmail to achieve email bliss —cough— I mean, Inbox Zero. There’s a whole other post explaining how you can get there too, check it out!

Screenshot of an empty inbox in Gmail
Email bliss AKA Inbox Zero