How to let Claude send emails for you

Imagine having an assistant that reads, writes, and sends emails without even having to lift a finger. This is exactly what Claude can do once logged into your Gmail account. Luckily, it’s pretty simple to set everything up with Anthropic’s Gmail connector, which bridges the gap between Claude and your inbox. Once Claude is connected to your email, you can fine-tune the approval settings to keep control of each message sent. The connector is available for all plans, so you don’t need a paid Claude subscription to use it.

Once connected, Claude can search and read your emails, write replies and send or forward messages. It can even organize your inbox with labels and threads without the need for special commands or rigid templates. You simply describe what you need and Claude takes care of the rest.

Approval checks are a key part of this entire experience. By default, Claude asks for your consent before sending an email, responding to anything or even forwarding an email. Therefore, you have the opportunity to check before anything is published. If you’re wondering how this all works, let’s take a look at how all the settings work, how to adjust them if you prefer a more hands-on approach, and what options you have depending on your plan.

To connect your Claude account to your Gmail, use the Anthropic Gmail connector. The entire setup will only take a few minutes.

1. Go to Claude in your browser or launch the application.

2. Faucet Customize > Connectors or press the + connect to chat and choose Connectors.

3. Go to Browse Connectors and search for Gmail. This will be one of the best connectors available, so it’s easy to spot.

4. Log in with your Google account, grant permissions and you’re done.

Once logged in, you don’t need to know any special commands or prompts. In fact, you can just go to your regular chat interface and ask Claude for help. For example, you could say “Find Alex’s latest email and write a response.”

From there, Claude will search for the specific email you want to reply to, read it, and create a draft reply in that thread. Claude tells you exactly what the draft says, and you can choose to go back to Gmail to send the email yourself, or you can just ask Claude to do it. And don’t forget that you can also use Claude for other inbox-related tasks, like forwarding emails or organizing your inbox with labels and threads.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will need to use your personal Claude account for this. Otherwise, if you’re using an account that’s part of a Team or Business plan, you’ll need to ask the plan owner to enable the organization-level connector before you or anyone else can sign up with their business account.

By default, Claude asks for your consent before doing anything. In fact, instead of giving it blanket permission, you can have the AI ​​ask for your approval for every situation in which it needs to create a draft email.

If you prefer a more hands-off approach or if the constant requests for permission annoy you, you can adjust this quite easily. On Team and Enterprise plans, owners can decide whether members can allow these actions to run without asking each time. Individual users can enable and disable specific tools directly from the chat interface. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to your chat interface and click on the plus sign. Go to Cconnectors and choose Gmail.

• There are many tool permissions you can play with, and you’ll find them under Read-only tools And Write/delete tools.

By default, read-only tools are located under a Always allow setting for Claude to retrieve specific emails, threads, list labels, etc. without asking anything. The write/delete tools are by default under “Approval Required”, so Claude will ask for your consent every time he creates or deletes a label, marks a message as spam, responds to emails, or does anything else that could really affect you. You can switch from one setting to another at any time and the options are Always Allow, Require Approval, or Block.

The wisest thing is to start by asking Claude’s permission, and once you are comfortable with the quality and tone of the answers, you can loosen the reins a little. Allowing Claude to manage your emails for you might be a big step for most people, but for those who are starting to integrate AI more and more into their work and personal lives, letting it handle responding to some emails here and there can be a great way to free up some brain cells for other tasks.