Whether you have friends or family members who work and live different schedules than you, or you find yourself sending more “happy belated birthday” messages than you’d like, having the ability to schedule text messages ahead of time is an incredibly useful feature.
Scheduling texts in Android used to be a rare feature, but there are now multiple apps that let you draft messages to be sent later, even on the stock Android SMS apps.
Schedule texts on Samsung smartphones
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Samsung Galaxy and Note smartphones users can schedule texts messages using the default Samsung SMS app that comes pre-installed on these smartphones:
- Open the Samsung SMS app
- Draft your text message
- Tap the “+” button near the text field, or the three dots in the top right corner of the screen to open the calendar
- Select the date and time
- Tap “Send” to schedule.
Schedule texts in Android Messages
Most non-Samsung Android phones can schedule texts in the default Android Messages app. We covered how to schedule and edit texts in Android Messages when it entered testing late last year, but the function is now available on all phones running Android 7.0 or higher. Google produced a handy animation on how text scheduling works in Android Messages, but you may need to update your system and the app before you can use it.
Other apps that let you schedule texts
If Samsung Messages is unavailable on your phone and you can’t use Android Message’s new scheduler tool, Telegram and Pulse SMS are a couple of alternatives that could work instead.
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How to schedule texts in Telegram
- Open Telegram and open/start a chat with the person you’re scheduling a message for.
- Type up the message as normal.
- To schedule, long press “Send” to open the sending options. Select “Schedule Message.”
- Select the date and time you want to send the message.
- Tap “Send” to confirm. You text will automatically send once it’s time.
If you want to edit or delete scheduled Telegram text, open the conversation and tap the calendar icon to see all unsent messages. Tap one to edit the message, adjust the date, or delete it.
How to schedule texts in Pulse SMS
- In Pulse SMS, tap the orange “+” button and then select the contact you wish to text.
- In the conversation window, tap the three vertical dots icon in the upper right, then tap “Schedule a message.”
- Set the date and time using the calendar interface
- Draft your message. When you’re finished, tap “add” to schedule.
To view, edit, or delete a scheduled message in Pulse SMS, select “Scheduled Messages” in the sidebar menu. Select the conversation then long-press an unsent message. Select “Edit” to edit the text, or “Delete” to delete the scheduled message.
Use IFTTT to schedule texts
This method of scheduling texts is a little more complicated than directly scheduling a text via Pulse SMS, but if you don’t want to swap to a whole new SMS app, it’ll get the job done.
This IFTTT applet can be used to schedule a text message when a Google Calendar event is triggered. The only requirements are an IFTTT account linked to the necessary apps (IFTTT will request permission if you haven’t linked to proper accounts/apps yet). Simply use the links above and follow the on-screen instructions to set up the message.
Use alarms or calendar reminders
This last suggestion is only a half measure since it requires you to follow through and send the text yourself, but having a reminder loaded with a pre-written message is better than nothing.
While you can’t directly schedule and send a text message through Google Calendar, you can still use it to set up event reminders to send a text for special occasions. You can even write up a draft of the text you’re thinking of sending in the “Notes” section when setting up the reminder—that way you can copy and paste the text when the time comes to finally send it.
This post was originally published in 2018 and was updated on February 25, 2021 with a new header image, additional information about Android messages, and new alternatives for scheduling texts.