You could already schedule an email to send on a specific day and time in Apple’s Mail app, but that functionality is now also available in the Messages app. What’s even better is that scheduled messages sync across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, something you don’t get in the Mail app.
To schedule texts in the Messages app, you must be running iOS 18, iPadOS 18, or macOS 15 Sequoia (all currently in beta). Only iMessage is supported, so you can’t schedule RCS, SMS, or MMS texts. If you want scheduled messages to sync across your devices, you need Messages in iCloud enabled on each device.
You can’t yet ask Siri to schedule messages for you; it will just tell you to do that in the Messages app. But we hope that functionality eventually comes into play.
In an iMessage conversation, you can compose a message before setting a send-later day and time or after — it doesn’t matter. When ready, tap the Apps (+) button next to the text field, hit “More,” and choose “Send Later.”
The Send Later tool occupies the top portion of the text field. Tap the default date and time, pick the day and time you want, and then hit the Send button when your composed message is ready. You can schedule messages up to 14 days in the future.
Scheduled messages appear in the conversation as sent messages do, but they hug the bottom of the conversation and have a dashed blue iMessage bubble around them. Any new messages sent or received will appear above the scheduled ones.
After you schedule one message, you can continue scheduling more since Send Later is still active, set to the last used date and time.
You can’t currently edit the text in a scheduled message, but you can tap “Edit” above it to see available options. “Send Message” lets you send the message immediately, “Edit Time” lets you choose a different date and time, and “Delete Message” lets you cancel the message entirely.
If you plan to use Send Later frequently, tap the Apps (+) button next to the text field, find “Send Later,” and drag and drop it up past the “More” section to your frequently used apps for faster access.
On a Mac, everything works more or less the same, which makes it easy to jump between devices to schedule and manage Send Later messages.
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Cover photo and screenshots by Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks
