Find out how to check if someone has read your email in this article. One big difference between turn-based communication like emails, texts, and apps like Facebook Messenger and real-time communication like the phone or video chat is that you can reply to a message when you’re ready. The messages stay in your inbox or as big text on your smartphone until you pick them up.
You may see a little number on the Email or Messages icon to tell you how many unread messages are waiting for you. However, sometimes an email, instant message or text fails to go through. You’re sure you tapped or clicked Send, but the message disappeared into cyberspace. It happens. Or perhaps the message ended up in your friend’s or colleague’s junk or spam folder.
How to check if someone has read your email
You might be able to tell if someone has read your email with Google’s “read receipts” feature. But you can’t use this feature unless a person in charge of your account turns on read receipts. If you are in charge of an account, do these things:
- Log in to your Google Workplace account.
- Click “Apps.”
- Click “Google Workspace Core Services.”
- Select the Gmail icon and click “User Settings.”
- You should see the “Email read receipts” option. Choose between disallowing all, only allowing receipts for approved email addresses, or allowing receipt requests for any email address.
Assuming your Gmail account has read receipts turned on, here’s how to ask for one:
- Compose your email and click the “More Options” icon. This icon may appear as an arrow or as three dots, depending on your device.
- Select “Request read receipt.”
- Click “Send.”
The read receipts system that Google has isn’t perfect. You might not get a receipt if any of the following happen:
- Your company or school’s administrator restricts read receipts only to addresses on the organization’s allowlist.
- The recipient has an email platform that doesn’t use real-time synchronization. For example, the Post Office Protocol (POP) platform only syncs on demand.
- You’ve sent your message to an alias or a group mailing list.
- The recipient’s email platform uses Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), and they haven’t set it to send receipts automatically.
You can see if someone has read your Gmail email thanks to some third-party platforms. For example, mailtrack.io has a tracking extension that can be used for this:
- Download the “Email Track for Gmail – Mailtrack” extension from Google Chrome’s web store.
- Upgrade to the “Campaigns” plan to track emails sent to a maximum of 200 people. You can also add Gmail receipts to your most important emails.
- Once set up, the extension provides information about what happens to your Gmail emails after they’ve been sent.
How to Check if Someone Read Your Email Outlook
Like Gmail, Outlook lets you see if someone has read your message by using “read receipts.” Do the following to turn them on for all of your emails:
- Click “File” and select “Options,” then “Mail.”
- Select “Tracking.”
- You’ll see a box that says, “Read receipt confirming the recipient views the message.” Check it.
- Another box reads, “Delivery receipt confirming the message was delivered to the recipient’s email served.” You can check this box if you’d like to confirm that your email was delivered.
- Apply the changes by clicking the “OK” button.
You can decide to only send read receipts for certain messages:
- Compose a new email message and navigate to the “Options” menu.
- Select “Tracking.”
- Check the “Request a Read Receipt” box.
- Send your email.