Sharing your email password with someone is a big test of trust. And if you're one of those people who uses the same password for everything, even though you know you shouldn't, well it's just an impossibility.

With Gmail's delegates feature, you can grant someone access to your account without revealing your password. You can add up to 10 delegates with a regular account and up to 25 with a school or work account.

Delegates can read, send, and delete messages in your Gmail account. When an email is sent by a delegate, their email address will appear in the message as well. They can also manage your Gmail contacts. They cannot change any of your Gmail settings, including your password, and will be unable to chat with anyone on your behalf.

This is a great feature for granting assistants access to your email, or for creating one customer service email to be used by multiple people.

How to Add Delegates in Gmail

  1. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import.
  2. Under Grant access to your account, click Add another account.
  3. Choose whether messages read by delegates are marked as read or not.
  4. When prompted, enter the email address of the person you want to grant access to your account, then confirm that you want to share access.

The delegate will receive an email with a link that they must click within seven days of receiving the email, or else the offer will expire. You'll know when someone has accepted your request by going back to the Accounts and Import section and you'll see whether or not they've accepted next to the email address.

Google says it should take about 30 minutes for the setting to kick in, and then the delegate can view and send emails on your behalf.

To see the process in action, check out the video below:

How to Remove Delegate in Gmail

If you decide you no longer want a delegate to have access to your Gmail account, do the following:

  1. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import.
  2. Under Grant access to your account, click Delete next to the email account you want to remove.

Do you use Gmail delegates? How do you grant other people access to your email account? Let us know in the comments. 

Image Credit: Cairo via Flickr