Let users request read receipts

Who this article is for

This article is for Google Workspace administrators who want to let people in their organization send read receipts from their work or school Gmail accounts. Read receipts don't work with personal Gmail (gmail.com) accounts.

As an admin, you can let people in your organization request or return email read receipts. A read receipt is an email notification to let the sender know when a recipient has opened their message. Learn more about how read receipts work.

When you turn on read receipts for your organization, your users can Request or return a read receipt.

Important: We don't recommend that you rely on read receipts to verify message delivery. Generally, read receipts work across email systems. However, it's possible for read receipts to be sent for unread messages, and sometimes read receipts for opened messages aren't sent or delivered as expected.

Read receipt options

You have options to manage how read receipts are used in your organization:

• You can limit who receives read receipts or allow anyone to receive them.
• You can set read receipts to be sent back to the sender automatically when a recipient opens a message. Or, you can require recipients to approve sending a read receipt back to the sender each time they open a message.

Set up read receipts for your users

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  AppsGoogle WorkspaceGmailUser settings.
3. Under Gmail, to apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select a child organizational unit.
4. In the Email read receipts section, select options for your organization:
   • Do not allow email read receipts to be sent: Turn off the option to send read receipts to anyone.
   • Allow email read receipts to be sent to all addresses in my organization as well as the allowlisted email addresses: Limit sending read receipts to to addresses in your domains and any external addresses that you enter in this setting. For addresses that you enter in the setting:
     • Separate external email addresses with commas.
     • Enter up to 100 addresses.
     • Each address can have up to 256 characters.
   • Prompt the user for each read receipt request: Require recipients to approve sending each read receipt back to the sender. If this box isn't checked, read receipts are sent back to the sender automatically when the recipient opens each message.
   • Allow email read receipts to be sent to any email address: Allow read receipts to be requested and returned from email addresses inside and outside your organization. When you select this option, the Prompt the user for each read receipt request box is selected and disabled, meaning that recipients must approve all read receipts before they're sent back to the sender.
5. Click Save.

Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more

How read receipts work

Read receipts behave differently based on the email program you use to open messages. For example, a read receipt might be sent automatically, without recipient approval, if the message was opened with an IMAP or POP email client. Some non-IMAP mobile email apps don't support read receipts.

If the sender's email program doesn't support read receipts, the receipt might not be sent. 

Gmail delivers read receipts only to individual user email accounts. Gmail doesn't sent read receipts to groups or other mailing lists.