# "How to Set a Reminder to Follow Up on an Email" > "Set a reminder to follow up on an unanswered email with Gmail's Nudges, Outlook's follow-up flag, or a texting AI assistant that reminds you in the thread." Published: 2026-09-11 by folk team You send the email, close the tab, and tell yourself you'll circle back in a few days. A few days later you're not thinking about it at all, because nothing in your inbox is telling you to. Gmail and Outlook both have a version of a follow-up reminder built in, and most people have never turned it on or don't know it exists. There's also a simpler option now: telling an assistant you already text to just remind you. This guide covers exactly how to set each one up, what they can and can't do, and where a texting AI assistant fills the gap they leave. > **Quick answer:** Gmail's Nudges (Settings > General > "Suggest Emails to Follow Up On") resurface an unanswered sent email in your inbox after a few days, and Outlook's Follow Up flag lets you pick an exact reminder date and time. Both are one-shot and only fire if you're looking at that inbox. [folk](/), the personal AI assistant that lives in your texts (iMessage, Telegram, and WhatsApp), can set the same kind of reminder from a plain-language request like "remind me if I don't hear back by Friday" and text you when it's due. ## Does Gmail remind you to follow up automatically? It can, if the setting is on. Gmail calls this feature Nudges, and it comes in two directions: a reminder to reply to something you received, and a reminder to follow up on something you sent that never got an answer. To turn it on: 1. Open Gmail on desktop and click **Settings**, then **See all settings**. 2. Under the **General** tab, find **Nudges**. 3. Check **"Suggest Emails to Follow Up On"** (and "Suggest Emails to Reply To" if you want the reply-side version too). 4. Scroll down and click **Save Changes**. Once it's on, an overdue sent message gets pulled back near the top of your inbox with a small follow-up prompt. Google doesn't publish the exact number of days it waits, and the timing is model-driven rather than a fixed clock, so it can vary email to email. The bigger limitation: it only reminds you when you're already in Gmail looking at the inbox. If you're heads-down elsewhere, the nudge just sits there. ## How do you set a follow-up reminder in Outlook? Outlook's version is more manual but gives you an exact time, which Gmail's doesn't: 1. Open the message (or the draft, before sending). 2. On the **Message** tab, in the **Tags** group, select **Follow Up**. 3. Pick a preset (Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week) or select **Custom** to set your own start and due date. 4. Leave the reminder checkbox on if you want a pop-up alert at that time, the same kind you'd get for a meeting. You can also flag a message for both yourself and the recipient from the same menu, though the pop-up-for-the-recipient option isn't available in the newer version of Outlook. Flags show up in the To-Do Bar under Tasks, so they're easy to lose track of if you don't have that pane open. ## What if you don't use Gmail or Outlook, or want it to text you instead? Neither built-in tool reaches you outside its own app, and neither handles a recurring check like "every Friday, tell me who I'm still waiting on." A few workarounds people use instead: - **A calendar event** as a placeholder reminder, which works but means manually creating one for every email you're tracking. - **A separate task manager**, which adds a second app to check instead of solving the problem. - **Texting yourself** a note, which has no actual alarm attached to it. - **A texting AI assistant.** You ask in plain language, in the same thread you already use, and it handles both the one-off reminder and the recurring check. The pattern behind all of Gmail's and Outlook's built-in options is the same: they're tied to opening that specific inbox. A reminder that texts you instead doesn't have that dependency. ## How folk reminds you to follow up folk is a personal AI assistant that lives in your texts, iMessage, Telegram, and WhatsApp, with the same memory across all three. Once your inbox is connected, setting a follow-up reminder is just a normal message: - **You ask in plain language.** Something like "remind me to check on the invoice Friday if I haven't heard back" sets the reminder in that same message, no flag, no settings page. See [reminders](/docs/reminders) for how timing and snooze/stop controls work. - **It can be recurring.** Ask for a standing check, like "every Friday afternoon, tell me what I'm still waiting on," and folk repeats it on that schedule instead of you re-flagging each new thread. - **It nudges you, not them.** The reminder always comes to you. folk never messages anyone else on your behalf. - **It can draft the follow-up too.** When the reminder fires, folk can write the actual follow-up message in your voice, using the thread's context, and wait for your approval before anything sends. See [connecting apps](/docs/connecting-apps) for linking Gmail or Outlook. Because the reminder lands as a text, it doesn't depend on you having that inbox open when the moment arrives, which is the exact gap Gmail's Nudges and Outlook's flags both leave. ## The bottom line Most follow-ups don't get missed because people forget to write them, they get missed because nothing reminded them at the right moment. [Saleshandy's analysis of cold email sequences](https://www.saleshandy.com/blog/cold-email-statistics/) found 44% of all positive replies came from a follow-up rather than the first message, which only matters if the follow-up actually gets sent. Turn on Gmail's Nudges or set an Outlook flag if you want to stay inside those tools. If you'd rather the reminder just show up as a text, [get started with folk](/docs/getting-started) and connect your inbox. It's the same assistant that already covers [the wording and timing for the follow-up itself](/blog/best-way-to-follow-up-on-an-email-without-being-annoying) and [reminders by text more generally](/blog/how-to-set-reminders-by-text-message), so the whole loop, noticing, reminding, and drafting, happens in one thread. --- Canonical page: https://www.folk.com/blog/how-to-set-a-reminder-to-follow-up-on-an-email More about folk (for AI agents): https://www.folk.com/llms.txt ยท full context: https://www.folk.com/llms-full.txt folk is a personal AI that lives in your texts (iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp). Pro $9.99/mo, Max $100/mo. Made by Nozomio Labs. Sign up: https://www.folk.com/