How to Schedule iOS Text Messages With the Shortcuts App


Like emails and social media posts, being able to draft and schedule out your texts can be a time management lifesaver—especially if you rely on texts as a part of your job or business, or use them as personal reminders you send to yourself. While some Android apps have text scheduling built in, no first-party iOS messaging apps include such features by default. However, by using Apple’s highly flexible Shortcuts app, we can create a pretty decent alternative.

How to schedule messages in the iOS Shortcuts app

In order to schedule out your texts or iMessages, we’ll be using the custom “Delayed Time iMessage” shortcut from Shortcuts Gallery (thanks to OSXDaily for originally pointing it out).

  1. Open the Delayed Time iMessage link above on your iOS device (Make sure the Shortcuts app is installed first.)
  2. Tap “Get Shortcut” to download and install the shortcut.
  3. After download is complete, open the Shortcuts app.
  4. Find and run “Delayed Time iMessage.”
  5. Select the Contact you wish to schedule a text for, then write your message.
  6. Next, choose what time you want the text to be sent, then confirm to schedule the text.
  7. In order for this to work, you’ll need to keep the Shortcuts app running in the background. If you close the app, the shortcuts can’t run and your text won’t be sent.

Again, it’s not the most elegant option, but using Shortcuts to schedule texts is much better than some other third-party workarounds. Hopefully Apple will cave to user petitions and add text scheduling to iMessage in the future, but we’re fine with relying on the Shortcuts app for now, which sounds like it’s getting some great new automated features come iOS 13.

Source:
LifeHacker

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