Most Popular
‘ZDNET Recommends’: What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET’s recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET’s editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
The only things you’ll need to make this work are an Android device with a data plan.
Have you ever composed a text message on your Android device and thought, “I should wait to send this.” And then you delete the message and make a mental note to take care of it later.
Also: 5 simple ways to improve your Android phone security today
Today’s smartphones continue to add new capabilities to automate and streamline life, entertain us, organize us, and connect us to one another in powerful new ways. Most people aren’t taking advantage of many of the features that could help them the most. We help you change that.
When later comes, you might well have forgotten what you were going to say, who you were going to say it to, and why you were going to say what you wanted to say.
That can be frustrating (at best).
Or, maybe you wanted to send yourself a reminder to do something at a specific time and you don’t want to set an annoying alarm that could interrupt meetings, sleeping babies, or just your sense of peace.
Either way, knowing how to schedule the sending of text messages in Android can come in very handy. Let me show you how easy this is to accomplish.
What you’ll need: The only things you’ll need to make this work are an Android device with a data plan (for the sending of texts). The feature is found in Android Messages, which is pre-installed on all Android phones, so there are no apps to install. It’s all there, ready to go.
The first thing to do is unlock your Android phone and open the Messages app.
For this, you can either create a new chat (by tapping the Start chat button) or open a pre-existing chat. If you create a new chat, you’ll then select the recipient as you normally would.
Start composing a new chat or open a pre-existing chat.
On the resulting window, type the message you want to send.
Start typing the message you want to schedule.
After you’ve completed typing the message, long press the Send button (right-pointing arrow at the bottom right of the screen).
Also: Change this one Android setting to instantly make your phone feel twice as fast
From the resulting popup, select either later today (5:00 PM), later tonight (9:00 PM), Tomorrow (8:00 AM), or a custom time.
If you want a custom date/time for sending, tap Pick date and time.
If you opt for a custom time, tap Pick date and time. In the next popup, you’ll first select the date, tap Next, and then set the time.
First select a date and then you’ll select a time for custom schedule sending.
In the last window of the custom time wizard, verify the time and date and then tap Save. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see the text and time at the bottom of the window.
Also: How to enable read receipts in Android Messages
Tap the Send button and your text is scheduled to be sent. It will appear in the chat timeline with a special Schedule icon.
If all is correct, tap Save to schedule the custom time.
And that’s all there is to scheduling text message sending in Android. You can use this to either schedule a message to a friend or family member or even to send yourself reminders, without having to rely on an awkward (and sometimes jarring) alarm. I use this feature regularly to ensure I don’t miss or forget something when a noisy alarm won’t do.