Even though all kinds of messaging apps, such as WhatsApp oriMessage, are so widespread and convenient, email is still holding its own.

While instant messaging options are ideal for more casual conversations, electronic mail is the virtual communication method of choice when you need to take care of something more serious, especially when it’s work or school related.

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It’s a game-changer if you really need to know if someone got your message.

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Unfortunately, the fact that the email is so widespread does not mean that it has all the conveniences that you’re used to on the most popular messaging apps. One of the most handy of these is the ability to see whether your message has been received and opened. It’s agame changerif you really need to know if someone got your message.

Fortunately, if you have aGmail account, there is a way to find out whether your message has been read or not yet by the recipient. What’s even better is there are a few options to find that out, so, you can pick the one that appeals the most to you.

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Where are the receipts?

If you’re using your Gmail account without any adjustments to the settings, you generally do not get any information if the email you’ve sent has been read. The service lets you know that the email has been sent, but you have no idea what’s going on after it reaches the recipient’s inbox.

That being said, there are ways to take a peek at the other side. One of them is, in fact, provided by Google itself, and baked right into Gmail – but, you do need to meet certain requirements to get it. However, even if you don’t, not everything is lost. Thanks to certain plugins with a bit of crafty technology behind them, you can receive notifications about the status of your email messages straight into your Gmail inbox.

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So, whether you’re eligible for the Google-provided method, or you’re in need of a little help from a third-party plugin, here are both ways to know whether your email has been read.

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Asking nicely

The first and most straightforward way to see whether someone opened an email from you is available directly in Gmail. It is the feature that most big email service providers have – read receipts.

You can simply request a read receipt from the other person when sending your email. Then, once they open your message, they are asked by the system to confirm that they’ve read through the email. Once they do that, you receive confirmation that your message has been read on your end.

A computer with Gmail pulled up in a dark room

Unfortunately, even though this feature is built into Gmail, it’s not available to everyone. In fact, it’s only possible to enable it if you’re a user of Google Workspace, a paid version of Google’s office suite. Not only that, but you need to have admin privileges to change your settings, so getting this to work might be a bit tricky and expensive.

So, if you have access to Google Workspace, whether through your work, academic institution, or any other means, here’s how to enable read receipts in Google Workspace settings:

Once read receipts have been enabled in the settings, here’s how to turn them on in Gmail:

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Use a third-party pixel tracker plugin

Take it out of Google’s hands

Even though read receipts are quite common and work across most big email service providers, they are not totally reliable. The recipient can just ignore them, or they can be blocked by the inbox, making it difficult to rely on them.

On top of that, if you’re using the free version of Gmail, you simply don’t have access to it at all. Fortunately, there is a solution that answers both of these problems – pixel tracker plugins.

How does a pixel tracker work?

First, let’s look into how pixel trackers work. The idea is quite simple, but also rather genius.

The program inserts a singular pixel into your email message, just as you’d insert a banner or a similar graphic. This pixel is packed with tracking information, and its purpose is to relay the info about your email being opened back to the plugin. Once it does that, you’re able to see not only when the email was read, but also how many times it was opened.

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How to use a pixel tracker plugin?

Various pixel tracker plugins are not official apps from Google, but rather third-party solutions. It’s vital to keep that in mind, along with all the security concerns that might carry, when using them. That being said, I’d recommendMailsuite– it’s the most popular and reputable solution of its kind, and you shouldn’t really have any problems with it.

So, once you’ve decided to rely on Mailsuite, here’s how to use it:

Can you block pixel trackers?

When you don’t want the sender to know if you opened a message

Even though pixel trackers are extremely useful for senders, they might be seen as a bit invasive if you’re a recipient of an email. Sometimes you just don’t want the other side when you’ve read the message. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to block them.

As pixel trackers are treated as images by your email service, the only thing you need to do to stop them from tracking is to disable automatically loading images. Once you do that, a tracking pixel will be unable to send back information until you load the images in the message manually.

Here’s what you need to do to disable automatically downloading images:

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Q: Does Gmail have read receipts?

Q: Do read receipts work across different email service providers?

Read receipts are a universal standard that most email service providers support, and if you’re not using something rather obscure, it should be supported. However, some browsers might block them by default, and you can also simply ignore answering these requests, so the system is not totally reliable.