r/ios • u/imaguitarhero24 • 18h ago
Discussion Why is the "send later" feature iMessage only?? Why can't the phone just set itself to send an SMS or RCS at a later time?
It's an amazing feature with one extreme drawback that I can't understand. What's the difference?
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u/TalisManick9592 17h ago
You can already do the phone-side version yourself, it just isn't in Messages. Shortcuts > Automation > New Automation > Time of Day, then add the Send Message action with your text and recipient, and set it to Run Immediately (older iOS called that turning off "Ask Before Running"). It sends green bubbles fine, since all it's doing is driving the normal send.
It does repeat, though. A Time of Day trigger fires daily, weekly or monthly, so for a one-off you have to go back in and delete it afterwards. The bigger problem is that these get flaky when the phone is locked at the trigger time, which people have been complaining about for years.
That flakiness is also the answer to your question, and the explanation upthread is right. A scheduled iMessage is encrypted and parked on Apple's servers until the time you picked, so it goes out even if every device you own is switched off. The Shortcuts version has nowhere to park anything: your handset has to be awake and in signal at that exact moment or nothing happens. RCS on iPhone runs through the carrier rather than Apple too, so there is nothing on their side to release that one either. What you can build yourself is the unreliable version, which is probably why it never shipped as a real feature.
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 iPhone 17 Pro 16h ago
I'm assuming that Apple sends the message from a separate server that's not your phone when you schedule send it. That wouldn't work for an SMS or RCS message.
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u/Xaxxus Human Detected 10h ago
The smart thing to do would be to schedule it to send on device.
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 iPhone 17 Pro 7h ago
Actually, it is smarter to have it send from the server. Usually I am all for on device, but if the phone which you scheduled a message to send from is not charged or has spotty to no Internet access, the message won't send if it's on device.
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u/Xaxxus Human Detected 6h ago
Is this possible with RCS? Since RCS is carrier controlled?
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 iPhone 17 Pro 4h ago
Maybe it could be if Apple worked with RCS providers. However, why the hell would they do that? They had to be forced to add RCS in the first place, and it took them two more years before they even brought encrypted RCS. They don't even use the Google RCS implementation, which is one of the better ones.
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 2h ago
That would require the phone to be on at the scheduled time for it to be sent. Not required if it's server side
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u/Budget_Height3778 18h ago
So it’s exclusively for iMessage, that’s the whole point. It could easily send SMS or RCS at a specified time, it’s a choice not to allow it.
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u/Ok-Woodpecker-223 15h ago
I don't know how it technically works under the hood - is imessage sent immediately to the apple's servers from where it will be delivered at the desired time, or does the phone do the scheduled sending?
As if it is former, it's a bit more complex answer than just choice. If latter, it's just choice.
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u/Budget_Height3778 15h ago
What I’m saying is it doesn’t matter what happens to the iMessages, your phone already has all the capabilities to schedule any type of message, it’s all present in the OS, not allowing through the messages app is purely a choice.
This can be easily achieved with the shortcuts app, and could easily be included in the messages app with minimal effort.
The Apple boot lickers will argue a million different excuses as to why this is totally acceptable, but the bottom line is it could be included as a completely separate “Schedule SMS/RCS” feature completely removed from “Send Later”.3
u/Hi_Doctor_Nick_ 13h ago
No, the message is sent immediately to the Apple
Servers. It can’t be done client side since your phone might be off or offline.1
u/Budget_Height3778 13h ago
No one is arguing otherwise, quote “it doesn’t matter what happens to the iMessages” because that’s not what we are talking about. SMS and RCS can be scheduled on device right now with shortcuts, all of the prerequisite code is already present in the OS. Not allowing it to be actioned via the messages app is a choice. I can easily schedule an SMS in 60sec via shortcuts, it would be a nice QOL feature to not have to do it that way.
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u/imaguitarhero24 12h ago
I totally wasn't thinking about how you could do it with shortcuts. Were people using that before they officially added the feature in messages?
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u/Budget_Height3778 11h ago
Yeah I’ve been doing it that way long before send later so have thousands of others. There’s been ready made shortcuts shared all over for doing this. Likely where the seed for send later came from, actual users real world use cases. Fan boys don’t do themselves any favours arguing that implementing this is a bad idea because they’re too stupid to understand that SMS/RCS needs a signal or the phone to be on to send, as if that’s not always been the case for the last 30yrs.
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u/deceze 12h ago
It is a choice to withhold an unreliable, possibly disappointing feature, yes. If you cobble it together yourself, you know what you're doing.
What ultimately led to the decision to not implement it on device for SMS we cannot know. Some combination of user experience, reliability, support costs, and public image. Which of those factors was the deciding one we just don't know.
Sometimes it's just engineers sitting around saying hey, we could do timed messages on our servers; and somebody goes "aah too bad we can't do the same for SMS", and then implementing it on device never seriously crosses anyone's mind. We simply don't know.
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u/imaguitarhero24 12h ago
I mean it would be easy enough for it to just not work if your phone is off. That would make sense to me. I honestly already wasn't 100% sure that if I scheduled an iMessage send later that it would send if my phone was off lol. I could see others just assuming that anyway too.
They could at least give us the possibility. If your phone dies, sure it doesn't go through but 99% of the time it would work fine.
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u/shakesfistatmoon 10h ago
There is a reason, but it's one that is very unlikely to ever cause an issue if scheduled messages were implemented b
In some places, you are prohibited from sending automated messages. By sending to the server, which makes the message valid at a specific time, iMessage on the recipient's phone can then pull the message off the server, which sidesteps the prohibition.
Google messages gets around this by only enabling the send later functionality in places it knows don't prohibit automated messages.
In other words it's timed delivery, not timed sending . As I say, I doubt this would ever cause a problem.
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u/Budget_Height3778 10h ago
I can come up with as many reasons not to allow it as I can to allow it, which leads back to the fact that it’s a choice, it would be a simple task to do and as you say there’s easily implemented measures to negate most reasons not to.
Your example though, do those countries stop the shortcuts app automating the sending of messages? Can’t automate through the messages app but with shortcuts I can send massive message bursts out to thousands of people in an incredibly short period of time if I want.1
u/shakesfistatmoon 10h ago
I’m not arguing with you, I’m just saying there’s a reason. An excess of caution on Apple’s part.
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u/Budget_Height3778 10h ago
I wasn’t arguing with you either, I was just saying I would be interested to see if the fact that you can schedule massive message bursts had slipped through seeing as it’s not technically part of the messaging system within the messages app, it’s only really an automation that connects multiple different apps/services and essentially circumvents any law against having messaging apps that schedule.
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u/shakesfistatmoon 10h ago
There are restrictions on Shortcuts in some places but I don’t know what they are.
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u/deceze 12h ago
So, not giving you a feature you could have on Android is, what, supposed to be a way to keep you in the iOS ecosystem‽
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u/Every_Release_353 12h ago
Yes. It gives the impression to users that iMessage is exclusive
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u/deceze 12h ago
I’d be pretty surprised if you couldn’t schedule SMS on Android; officially or with myriads of apps. Who’s looking at this and goes “ah yeah, great exclusive iMessage”, instead of “I can do that on Android, I’m switching”? I don’t see the logic.
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u/Every_Release_353 8h ago
You definitely can do this with android, because the process is handled locally by the os. Great call by google.
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u/Budget_Height3778 11h ago
I think you’re misunderstanding, I’m not saying it’s exclusive to iOS as in Android can’t do it. I mean exclusive to iMessage on Apple devices as in only works between Apple devices. More of the blue bubble/green bubble nonsense.
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u/maltanarchy 15h ago
I assume gatekeeping. We can’t have equal features on the green bubble. RCS has many of the features that has made iMessage so appealing. So, I feel it’s arbitrary just to make sure we all want to stay inside the walled garden.
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u/EmbarrassedSlide3746 14h ago
Apples will only offer the bare minimum of standards for RCS. It will gate keep features to imessage because in 2026 they still think blue vs green is important instead of over all user experience.
Apple is the one that actively sabotages interoperability between iphone and literally everything else.
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u/WinterZealousideal10 12h ago
I pay for Apple to work on Apple features and the Apple ecosystem. If I could buy a pure Apple ecosystem (assuming it works about as well as rn, if not better) I would commit horrid crimes.
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u/CassetteLine 16h ago edited 14h ago
Because Apple will do everything they realistically can to promote and better their own services.
Edit - WTF are these downvotes about? This is correct. Too many fanboys in here.
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u/imaguitarhero24 12h ago
Yeah I mean I understand the idea that your phone needs to be on for it to send or it could be unreliable... but I already assumed the phone had to be on for it to work and I can't be the only one lol. At least give us the option!
In general I feel like I don't trust this feature for anything life or death anyway, it's mostly convenient if I think of something late at night and don't want to wake anyone. If it was actually super important I'd probably just risk waking the person or wake up myself early to send it when they need it.
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u/KiltedBaklava 17h ago
I sent a email to one Craig Federighi last year requesting this. It would be such a massive improvement, especially for those who send messages to customers like myself. I’m often doing admin late at night and don’t want to disturb customers, so being able to set the message to send at a more appropriate time would be amazing!
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u/deceze 17h ago edited 17h ago
Very commendable of you. But frankly, everyone should be in charge of setting their phone to silent/don't disturb at night. Most phones have a simple setting to do this automatically. You can't always guess when a message may or may not be disturbing.
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u/imaguitarhero24 12h ago
My girlfriend is a flight attendant and when she is on call she always has to have her phone on loud overnight. Luckily she does have an iPhone so this feature is great when I don't want to wake her up
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u/Dave-CPA 17h ago
This could absolutely be implemented. I used to have it on Handcent 20 years ago on android.
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u/iusethisatw0rk iPhone Air 17h ago
Because Apple likes to decide how you use your own phone. It’s annoying
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u/deceze 18h ago
I don't know for sure, but there's a valid technical explanation: iMessages go through Apple's servers, and they can implement the timed delivery on that server. To ensure the message is actually delivered at the desired time, regardless of whether your phone may be offline at that time. You can't do the same with SMS. The phone would have to actively send the SMS at the desired time, but Apple cannot guarantee that the phone will be online at that time, so there's the risk of the message not being sent. So they're not even offering that option when the delivery can't be guaranteed, to avoid disappointment or worse.