Who gets your Gmail out-of-office reply?

You close the laptop for a few days thinking your away message will explain the silence. But will a customer emailing you for the first time get it? Gmail's existing guide says you can restrict vacation replies to your contacts. That's useful if you don't want every sender to receive your absence notice. It also means someone outside those contacts won't get that explanation. I'd choose the audience before polishing the message, especially for an inbox that receives new enquiries. On a computer, look under Settings → See all settings → General → Vacation responder. Check the date range and the contacts-only box, then save. Google also says messages sent to spam or addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to won't get the reply. Don't treat an automatic response as confirmation that every sender has been told. If you ask AI to draft the wording, give it the return date and only a cover contact who has actually agreed to help. ‘My colleague will handle this’ is a promise, even when software wrote it. You can simply say when you'll be reading email again without inventing someone else's availability. This is a setup check based on existing Gmail documentation, not a new feature or a delivery test I've run.