I’ve wanted the ability to schedule a message to send later on my iPhone for years. We all have our reasons for wanting this feature. Yes, I know there are apps that include this feature. Yes, I’ve tried them out. My dissatisfaction with the manner in which these apps performed the feature led me to uninstall and, well, wait. This Fall, the wait is over, unless like me, you’ve decided to install the iOS 18 Developer Beta. Apple has finally brought the ability to schedule a message with Send Later. It’s really easy to do too with one exception.

Just go to the Message app. Start a message to someone. When you finish, click the “+” button, then the “down” arrow at the bottom, then click Send Later. This will take you back to the message where you can then pick the day and exact time you want the message to be sent. You complete the task by clicking the blue “up” arrow next to the body of the text. This workflow “works” for almost every contact you have.

SIDE NOTE: While testing this out, I decided to try to send myself at message with the Send Later feature. The option to send later did not come up when I clicked the “down” arrow after clicking the “+” button. Interesting. Could this be a bug? I wonder if Apple will change and or fix this as I could see times when I would want to send myself a message “later.”