Gmail out of office from your iPhone.

Turn on the Gmail vacation responder on iPhone

1. Open the Gmail app.
2. Tap Menu at the top left, then Settings. If you have more than one account in the app, tap your work account: the vacation responder is set per account.
3. Under “Compose and Reply”, tap Vacation responder.
4. Turn on Vacation Responder.
5. Enter the date range, a subject and your message.
6. Optional: tap Send only to my Contacts.
7. Tap Save at the top right.

To stop it early, go back to the same screen and turn off Vacation Responder. The setting belongs to your Google account, so it also shows in Gmail on a computer, and it keeps working with your phone switched off.

Keep the message to two or three lines. A subject like “Out until 21 October” does most of the work, and the body only needs your return date and who to contact if it can’t wait.

Set the first and last day

Your reply starts at 12:00 AM on the start date and ends at 11:59 PM on the end date, unless you turn it off sooner. That has two practical effects:

• Set it up early. You can switch it on a week before you leave with a future start date. Nothing goes out until that day.
• Pick the last day carefully. If you’re back on a Monday, ending it on Monday at 11:59 PM gives you a first day to catch up before people expect replies.

The range is in whole days, so there’s no option to start it at 5:00 PM on a Friday. If you need that, start it on Friday and accept a few early replies, or start it on Saturday.

Who gets your Gmail auto-reply, and how often

• First message only. In most cases, people get your reply the first time they write.
• Again after four days. If the same person writes again more than four days later and your responder is still on, they get it again.
• Again after edits. If you change your message, someone who already got the old one gets the new one next time they write.
• Not spam or mailing lists. Mail that lands in spam, or that’s addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to, doesn’t get a reply.

Answering a thread yourself while the responder is on? Google’s tip: add a subject line to your reply, and it goes out as a separate email.

Reply only to contacts or your organization

Send only to my Contacts limits the reply to people in your Google Contacts. Handy if you don’t want every stranger, recruiter or sales sequence to learn you’re away.

If your Gmail is a Google Workspace work account, Gmail on a computer has long offered a second checkbox in SettingsSee all settingsGeneralVacation responder to reply only to people in your organization. Google’s iPhone steps only mention the Contacts option, so if you need the organization-only reply, set it on a computer before you go.

Turn off Gmail notifications for one account

If your personal and work Gmail share the app, you don’t have to go silent on both. Gmail’s notification setting is per account:

1. In the Gmail app, tap Menu, then Settings, then your work account.
2. Under “Notifications”, tap Email notifications.
3. Pick a quieter level, such as High priority only, or turn email notifications off for the trip.

Want the whole app quiet? Go to SettingsNotificationsGmail in iOS and turn off Allow Notifications. That silences every account in the app at once.

Keep Gmail closed until you’re back

Muted or not, Gmail still opens with one tap, and the unread count is waiting. Screen Time’s Downtime repeats by day of the week and App Limits are a daily budget, so neither covers “until the 21st”.

Out of Office has a Vacation schedule built for this: a one-off date range with a start and an “Unblocks” time. Pick Gmail (and Slack, Teams, whatever else counts as work) with Apple’s app picker, and during the range those apps open to a shield instead. Your maps, music and family chat stay open.

If personal mail lives in the same Gmail app, shielding it means shielding both. In that case, move work mail to Outlook or Apple Mail, or rely on the per-account notification setting above. Using Outlook too? See setting out of office in Outlook on iPhone, and for chat, out of office in Teams on iPhone. Every account type is covered in the out of office on iPhone guide.