How to Tell if Someone Blocked Your Email on Gmail [2023]

What To Know

Blocked on Gmail: Email them from 2-3 different emails. It is probably blocked if you don’t get a reply on the concerned email address.
Blocked on Google Chat: Send them a message. If it fails to deliver, then you’ve been blocked.
Where do blocked emails go: To the recipient’s ‘Spam’ folder, where they’re deleted after 30 days.

We’ve all been at the receiving end of unwanted emails that we end up blocking. It’s the power you have over things that are irrelevant to you. Don’t want to be spammed by phishing websites? Block. Don’t want to see newsletters from sites you don’t remember subscribing to? Block. Want to ignore people mailing you unnecessarily? Block.

But what if the tables are turned and you are the one that gets blocked? And how can you even tell if you’ve been blocked in the first place? Here’s everything you need to know to determine if someone’s blocked your email on Gmail and what it means.

How to know if someone blocked you on Gmail

Sadly, there is no direct way to know if someone has blocked you on Gmail. The only way is to gain an approximation in a roundabout way and go with your best judgment. Here’s how you can do so:

Method 1: On PC

On your PC, open your browser and login into Gmail if you haven’t already. Then, click on “Compose” in the top left corner.

Type your email and send it to the person whom you suspect has blocked you.

Now, wait for them to respond. Ideally, give them a few hours to a day. If you don’t hear from them, this could potentially mean they have blocked you, though it’s not certain. It could also just mean that they’re busy.

If you don’t receive a reply, send them an email from a different email. For this, you’ll have to log in from a different account. This doesn’t have to be a Gmail account. As long as you can mail them and solicit a reply, it’s good enough.

If you receive a reply there, then it’s a definite possibility that they have blocked your primary email on Gmail.

This method doesn’t always give you a certain yes or a no, chiefly because blocked emails are directed straight to the Spam folder where most people usually don’t bother looking. So, if your emails are not getting replied to, you can rest with the informed assumption that it’s mostly because you’ve been blocked and your emails are lying in the recipient’s spam folder.

There is always the possibility that the recipient is simply ignoring your emails, in which case, there’s nothing you can really do.

Method 2: On the Gmail app on Android

The same can be done via your Android device as well. Firstly, open Gmail.

Here, tap on Compose at the bottom.

Type up your email and send it to the person you believe has blocked you.

Wait for a reply. If you don’t get it, log in with a different email address. This you can do by tapping on your profile icon towards the top right.

… then selecting from your previously logged-in accounts, or choose “Add another account” to do so.

Of course, you can always use any other email service as well, such as Outlook or Yahoo. Then, send that person another email from this new account. Wait for them to reply. If you get a response, they may knowingly or otherwise have blocked your primary email. However, if they don’t respond to either email, they may want to keep you blocked.

To be completely sure, you can also set up an email with a different name and illicit a response through an official seeming but otherwise innocuous email, such that when they see it, they will have to reply. This could be along the lines of something like this:

Method 3: On the Gmail app on iPhone

To check whether someone has blocked you on Gmail from your iPhone, open the Gmail app on iOS.

Inside Gmail, tap on the Compose button at the bottom right corner.

In the new email draft screen that shows up, enter the email address of the recipient and type the message you want to send them. When your draft is ready, tap on the Send icon at the top right corner.

Once your email is sent, you’ll now have to wait for this person to respond. If you’ve previously received responses from this person, you may get a reply in a few hours or a day. In case, you’ve waited for over a day or two without a reply, you can assume that your email was blocked. There’s also a possibility that they ignored your email without blocking you or didn’t get the time to respond to you.

In either case, you try using your secondary email address from within the Gmail app or any other email exchange service like iCloud.com or Outlook. To switch to another Gmail account, tap on your profile picture at the top right corner of the Gmail app.

In the overflow menu that appears, select your secondary Gmail account to send a new email or log into one by tapping on Add another account. From your secondary account, you can send another email with the same message or a new one asking whether your email address has been mistakingly blocked.

You can also use the Mail app on your iPhone to compose a new message to send from other email services.

If you indeed get a reply when sending an email from a secondary account/service, it’s likely that your primary account is blocked either knowingly or mistakingly. In that case, you can ask the recipient to check for your previous emails inside their Spam folder and unblock your primary email address from there.

In case you don’t receive a response from your secondary email, then it’s pretty obvious that your messages are simply being ignored by the recipient in which case, there’s nothing else left to do.

How to tell if someone blocked you on Google Chat

Being blocked on Gmail doesn’t automatically carry over to Google Chat. One would have to block you separately there to avoid being texted. Depending on your device, there are a few ways to tell if someone has blocked you on Google Chat.