Delayed Messages on iOS

http://caleb.software/posts/ios-delayed-messages.html

by karagenit • 4 years ago

214 146 4 years ago

caleb.software

MBCook5• 4 years ago

I understand why Apple is hesitant to add the feature.

But this is a fantastic shortcut to get around the limitation.

Dracophoenix• 4 years ago

I don't. Why is Apple hesitant exactly?

alphaomegacode• 4 years ago

Me neither, can't see "the obvious" reason for them not implementing this.

Apple usually trots out "privacy" or "security" when people find their software lacking in terms of usability or convenience but I can't understand why this would be an issue for them.

samatman3• 4 years ago

Why would they be hesitant? Complex user experience?

I'll admit I've never scheduled a message for later, other than on Twitter since I've lived in some awkward time zones relative to the bulk of my mutuals. But I can't come up with a reason why Apple wouldn't want to add it.

hackernewds• 4 years ago

Spam

jpp• 4 years ago

I can imagine a number of complications here. How should delayed send work with respect to both end-to-end encryption and with network connectivity loss? Ie I can see a possible way to build this where the sending user’s device queues and sends it later, but what if that device is out of network coverage area, or battery-dead, at the requested send time? …so then we could think about doing it at the server level, but then to maintain end-to-end encryption, the message would have to be pre-encrypted; how would we handle rekeying a user? Ie if the delay send is for 24 hours from now, but one of the recipient’s keys get rotated (which afaik can happen in a couple of reasonable conditions; but others here will know more)… well, we end up with a solution that also can’t reliably deliver the message.

One thing I really appreciate about Apple Messages is just how well it works, and how little spam ever makes it in. I think the reliability of Messages is almost taken for granted… I wouldn’t want to give that reliability promise up for this sort of feature!

MBCook5• 4 years ago

What does the receiving user see? Do they know it was scheduled?

If not they may expect me to start responding when I may be unavailable.

What happens to read status (when on)? I haven’t read your last X messages but I did send one to you? That’s off.

Can it be canceled?

How does this interact with the new function in iOS 16 letting you edit and delete after send?

Can I schedule send on my iPhone but edit before send on my iPad?

What if I schedule send and lose network. Then I edit on both my iPhone and iPad to show different things but they’re both off network. Not they both come back. What gets sent?

What if the ‘wrong one’ comes back first?

Does it work with SMS?

Lots of weird complications to think about.

glacials• 4 years ago

I'll take a crack here: they believe the need should be solved elsehow. They see the "I want to send a message later because I don't want to bug anybody" need as better solved from the other end: "I don't want to be bugged because I'm asleep/busy/whatever".

pixelrevision• 4 years ago

I’d prefer it on long press to those 5 “it’s a party” things I can send.

thunfischbrot• 4 years ago

so I had come to depend on it in my daily workflow. It’s especially useful in situations where I have a work-related thought at 3AM and don’t want to risk waking up and annoying my co-workers.

At first glance this seems like a perfect match for e-mail instead of iMessage or SMS.

From least to most urgent: Postcard E-Mail Slack iMessage SMS Call

fragmede• 4 years ago

Not to mention, (some) email has a send later feature.

LeonenTheDK• 4 years ago

Another common feature of a default app that Apple lacks is having multiple timers on the iPhone clock app. Most often used by my partner when cooking and there are a couple things going that need different times. This is a feature in my Pixel and I just can't understand what reason there is to not include it.

That said though, this is a fantastic work around, I love seeing clever uses of tools to make them do things their creators (probably) didn't necessarily intend.

ezfe• 4 years ago

The HomePod and Watch both support multiple timers, which makes it more baffling

sgt• 4 years ago

The teams did not communicate

kmlx• 4 years ago

Another common feature of a default app that Apple lacks is having multiple timers on the iPhone clock app.

siri supports this. i mainly use it when cooking and need multiple timers.

hgazx• 4 years ago

It doesn’t allow me to do this. If I ask to create a timer and then ask to create another I’m asked if I want to replace the previous one.

jeffbee• 4 years ago

Not on iPhone.

14• 4 years ago

This is why I always loved jailbreaking my iPhones. Typically there is an app out there somewhere that will do what you want but it was always nice to go to cydia and find a tweak that allowed stock apps and functions to do what they normally would not be able to do.

yakubin• 4 years ago

I would love that feature for cooking! It's such a no-brainer.

Edit: it seems there exists an app for that[1]. Gonna try it tomorrow.

[1]: <https://apps.apple.com/us/app/easy-cooking-timer/id492224774>

MBCook5• 4 years ago

Why don’t my timers sync?

If I start something on my watch or HomePod why can’t I check in on it on my phone?

Why do I need a set of independent timers for ever Apple device I own?

robbiep• 4 years ago

You can check a HomePod timer on your phone - it’s in the home app under whatever pod it is, down the bottom

usrn2• 4 years ago

Syncing clocks is surprisingly difficult. On top of that you have to get the message to all the devices that there even is a timer, this might be delivered after the timer expires. I don't think you could do this in a way where people could rely on it. You already have caldav which can sync your agenda, I think that's probably the closest you'll get.

There's a sibling comment that mentions HomeKit timers. I'd bet those are living on some remote machine and you're only able to check them but they behave very differently from local timers.

philsnow2• 4 years ago

Especially since alarms can sync between phone/watch (or at least you can snooze/cancel phone alarms from the watch, which shows that they're at least talking)

usrn2• 4 years ago

iOS lacks support for multiple instances of nearly everything. It's the OS of "form over function."

null0pointer• 4 years ago

When shortcuts were first released I immediately tried to implement delayed messaging too. In the end I wasn’t able to get it working and gave up. Great job finding this workaround!

tumdum_• 4 years ago

Work though at 3am? Sounds like a really unhealthy relationship with work. Not surprised author is from states.

stuartd• 4 years ago

Some people (like me) are wide awake at 3AM and have work thoughts then. Others are asleep - we’re all different. I tend to use email drafts or email myself the text with a note to forward it.

a-dub3• 4 years ago

Work though at 3am? Sounds like a really unhealthy relationship with work. Not surprised author is from states.

it's common for creative individual contributors to work late and often those kinds of people do their best work late. i'd argue that the way it can become unhealthy is when rigid early work hours lead to sleep deprivation which can damage performance, well-being and overall stability.

texaslonghorn57• 4 years ago

I think this is a cool hack. And I frequently use delayed messages on Google Messages to obscure my late working hours and refrain from disturbing people with a 3AM notification.

But I've thought about this a bit recently, and I don't think I should have to worry about bothering someone at 3 AM. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect other people to have do not disturb on / notifications off whenever they don't want to be disturbed.

And one cautionary tale about scheduling messages (email in particular): I once encountered a problem at 3AM and scheduled an 8AM text to tell someone about it, but they woke up at 6AM and immediately fixed it and were confused why I still had the problem two hours later (when my message arrived).

Xeoncross• 4 years ago

Yeah, it's really weird to have to guess the settings other people desire.

That's why do not disturb on / notifications off is on each of our phones. We control that. I don't expect other people to figure out the right timezone and sleep patterns I have.

axg11• 4 years ago

That’s idealism whereas this hack deals with realism: many people don’t have their notifications setup perfectly and also feel the pressure to respond immediately.

lesstyzing• 4 years ago

Why’s that the message sender’s problem though? I can’t help if you pressure yourself even if I’m clear I’m putting none on you.

shaky-carrousel6• 4 years ago

Except for the part where you send me a message at 3 am about a work-related issue while I was placidly browsing Reddit and now you made me worry about work-related issues while on leisure time.

Work-related messages during working hours, please.

texaslonghorn57• 4 years ago

I agree, to be clear I continue to schedule messages despite my inner dialogue.

TameAntelope4• 4 years ago

No. Manage your own messaging systems, don't put that extra work onto others, as not everyone has the same schedule as you.

TrickyRick2• 4 years ago

You've never worked in an org with more than one time zone, have you?

matwood2• 4 years ago

Whose work hours? Times have changed where many people no longer have the same 8ish work hour overlap. There are tz differences and Flex Time. It’s up to you to manage your messages.

diegoperini• 4 years ago

Do not disturb is terrible if you are a part-time caregiver or on pager duty. No phone OS gives enough control over its settings and bad news often arrive from unknown numbers, i.e the hospital, 3rd party robot call service, friend of a friend etc. Speaking from experience.

kuschku• 4 years ago

I have mesages that can’t be linked to contacts on vibration during day (silent at night), messages from contacts on vibration during day (during night only the second message within of 15 minutes sends makes a noise), and phone calls always on loud.

That catches all unexpected emergencies without bothering me too much due to emails, IRC messages, or a random text from a friend.

mgfist• 4 years ago

A brute force solution would be a second (or third) phone for those situations

vlovich123• 4 years ago

I have DND and the PagerDuty alerts are set to bypass it through the app. There can be improvements made but expecting your social graph to respect an assumed context has similar problems (not to mention due to spam I think most people screen/ignore calls from unknown numbers). I like iOS’s ability to share your DND state with your contacts but even that has challenges (eg people turn it off for privacy reasons real or perceived).

a-dub3• 4 years ago

i'm old school but:

1) there's this amazing tool that allows you to send a longform communication directly to one or many people where it will get stored and when they're starting their workday they'll see it. it's called e-mail. you should turn off notifications on your phone for e-mail... if a message is urgent, they can call or text.

2) you shouldn't obscure when you're working. creative people often prefer to work late, you should be honest about this so early morning expectations are relaxed. if you're typically a morning person and up on a production issue you should not be expected to be in first thing the next day after staying up late to fix it.

3) all this delayed fake timestamp messaging just contributes to a toxic culture of everybody appearing to be working all the time.

s3p• 4 years ago

Firstly, IMO, email is by no way amazing. It is useful and essentially a standard way of communicating by now, but I have never once thought of the communication protocol as being amazing.

Second, there is nothing toxic about scheduling a text. My father is one of the people who never silences his phone, so when he gets a text or call at night he always wakes up. He gets annoyed if it's not urgent, so a scheduled text message in the morning would make him much happier. Scheduling a text message is all about convenience for the recipient of the message and comes out of a desire to be respectful of the other person's time.

irrational• 4 years ago

when they're starting their workday they'll see it

Well… I often don’t check my email till after lunch or later. This has never been a problem since anybody who needs an answer to something in less than 24 hours uses slack or text messaging.

yellow_postit• 4 years ago

That's how my thinking has come around as well and a benefit of maintaining work vs. personal device separation.

If I'm on a work computer/device/profile I don't mind seeing work-related items. Even better if its clear when action is needed.

As many companies become more diverse in working times, trusting individuals to manage it seems like one option while the other is would be patterned off the French "Right to disconnect"

noizejoy3• 4 years ago

Culture is a shifting beast.

Being courteous means trying to think on behalf of the other person.

However, as we interact with ever increasing numbers of individuals with an ever increasing variety of backgrounds and personal circumstance, it’s increasingly impossible to think on behalf of everyone we interact with.

And therefore it makes sense that we all need to design and configure mechanisms, that allow us to interact while keeping stress levels somewhat manageable.

ian_lotinsky• 4 years ago

Most of the time when I delay emails or Slack messages, it’s because I don’t want others to respond until later because of my own busyness or more important items to address today. Scheduling let’s me delay more back-and-forth but with the luxury of queuing my latest message now.

duxup• 4 years ago

I’d be ok with messages in a business app (teams, slack or whatever) at whatever hour. But if people are sending me iMessages to my personal phone number I’d be annoyed at just waking to a bunch of work stuff in there.

Context would really depend on my response to asynchronous messages piling up.

AdamJacobMuller4• 4 years ago

But I've thought about this a bit recently, and I don't think I should have to worry about bothering someone at 3 AM. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect other people to have do not disturb on / notifications off whenever they don't want to be disturbed.

I'm very direct about this with new hires.

"I'm awake and work weird hours. Please don't take a message from me outside your normal hours to mean I want or need an immediate response unless the message is directly talking about a production outage in which case i'll be explicit about that. If you're around and you want to spend a few hours debating the merits of embedding a lua interpreter into a data processing pipeline vs trying to figure out how to droplessly reload golang code great, if not, we can pick it up the next time we're both around.

On the same note, please don't not message me because it's late where you think I am at the moment and please don't not let me know about something because 'it's normal US hours, he probably already knows.'

Please also don't take offense if I don't respond immediately, despite appearances, I do sometimes actually sleep."

Setting the actual expectations works great. Some people respond simply by saying that they won't put slack on their phone, or will turn notifications for slack off and I'm fine with that (having their number to call for actual emergencies).

I think the problem arises not from the direct actions here (messaging someone at 3am) but by the implicit expectation of a reply. I think some people don't realize what they're doing but I think a lot do and they want to create that implicit must-reply-24-7 nature.

texaslonghorn57• 4 years ago

I get telling people that you are comfortable being contacted whenever. That's your choice/life.

But if I was working for you I would not like this part:

unless the message is directly talking about a production outage in which case i'll be explicit about that

because that means I have to keep notifications on and triage them even though the whole point is "I'm not going to respond outside work hours when my notifications are off / dnd is on."

thejosh• 4 years ago

This is why I like slack. I work with people across the globe, so they want to message me without fear that I'll be notified at 2am. Slack won't send you a notification after hours, unless the person presses "Notify anyway?". I've never had that happen in the last 3 years or so of using Slack where I am.

georgyo• 4 years ago

I also work weird hours at times, but hold my messages.

Please don't take a message from me outside your normal hours to mean I want or need an immediate response unless the message is directly talking about a production outage in which case i'll be explicit about that.

This still means they need to wake up everytime a message is received. There are likely other mechanisms for waking them during an outage, but the pressure it still there that it could be related to an outage that did not page them specially.

Similarly, getting a message while you are at a BBQ, family event, or bar will make you start thinking about the problem right away. Potentially removing their mind from the moment they are currently in.

If you're around and you want to spend a few hours debating the merits of embedding a lua interpreter into a data processing pipeline vs trying to figure out how to droplessly reload golang code great, if not, we can pick it up the next time we're both around.

You may be saying this honestly, but many people, especially junior new hires will feel pressure none the less. They really to make good impressions and impress people.

zmmmmm• 4 years ago

I think this creates a very undesirable culture where working outside of hours becomes normalised / expected / pressured. You can say it all you want that people don't have to read it or reply but some will still perceive that they need to read or respond to the messages even if it is just so they are "in the know" or not left out of discussions that might occur out of hours.

I delay all messages I send (even emails) so they appear in business hours. Slack and Outlook both support this and I suspect other tools too. The only real downside is that sometimes things evolve and then you have an incorrect or out of context / misleading message popping up ("It seems like the production database is down" popping up 8 hours after it was resolved etc).

wintermutestwin• 4 years ago

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect other people to have do not disturb on / notifications off whenever they don't want to be disturbed.

This makes sense in a world where vendors have perfected notifications. IMO, notifications are still a cluster^*&k. This is why they are still very much a moving target for ios.

bigiain2• 4 years ago

I don't think I should have to worry about bothering someone at 3 AM. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect other people to have do not disturb on / notifications off whenever they don't want to be disturbed.

I don't enable do not disturb for people who think that way. I just block them. If you are rude and entitled enough to decide you can disturb me any time you like, I'll ensure you can't.

3am calls/texts are fine for friends/family with an emergency. I will not let you put them at risk because I needed to dnd my phone because you choose to be a jerk.

Forgeties79• 4 years ago

I think it’s sort of depends on the workplace culture and everybody buying in or not.

At my company, they are very strict about “just because you message somebody on slack doesn’t mean they have to respond immediately.”

The corollary is “if you don’t set yourself as away or indicate you’re on PTO, as long as it isn’t wildly outside of work hours I expect a response.”

So I have no problem sending somebody a message at 10 AM on a Saturday. Because I know that everybody at the company generally has everything flipped off. Even if they get a notification, my assumption is that they will go “oh I forgot to turn that off,” flick it off, and promptly respond to me on Monday.

Like most of these things, the devil is in the details. And if you don’t make the rules clear from the get-go, then it can be ripe for abuse and situations like you being bothered by people in the middle of the night arise.

jimwalsh• 4 years ago

You realize phones can dnd everyone but the people you want to disturb you in the middle of the night now right?

rsync• 4 years ago

I usually send sms from the Unix shell so a delayed message takes the form of:

  sleep 7200 ; sms …

(Where ‘sms’ is a shell script that hits the twilio api with curl)

If I drop my phone in the river I can still send sms from my own phone number.

Not “blue” bubble though…

avel• 4 years ago

You could use at(1) instead, so that you don't need to keep that terminal process open.

yieldcrv2• 4 years ago

forget work, This would be useful for texting someone you’re interested in that would be wary of someone that text at an odd hour or “too soon”, just send the thing you are thinking of at the time but set a delay!

green-salt• 4 years ago

I feel like this is trying to dodge IM and email noise fatigue and having that bleed into texts. I'm nocturnal when I have the choice so I understand, but would definitely mute a coworker if they regularly texted me on a schedule for when I wake up.

yardstick• 4 years ago

It’s especially useful in situations where I have a work-related thought at 3AM and don’t want to risk waking up and annoying my co-workers.

Just send an email?

If it doesn’t require an immediate response, use email.

Also if it’s iPhone to iPhone you likely won’t interrupt the other user since they would/should have night mode on anyway.

blinded• 4 years ago

Similar to other notifications, I feel its up to the recienver to control their notification in a way that makes sense to them.

hkpack• 4 years ago

Some teams doesn’t have dedicated on-call engineer, so message as 3am may mean something may be urgent. At least it would be difficult to resist looking at what is going on.

E-mail is way to go in this situation.

Also, sender will be unavailable to reply for additional info, while appearing to be online.

macintux• 4 years ago

I don’t have access to corporate email on my phone, although I’d probably use Slack instead of a text.

prmoustache3• 4 years ago

We like it or not, spam, corporate and commercial harassment made so that many people have dropped email for most intra team communication a long time ago and barely check it or only once a week.

vimy• 4 years ago

You can make a new shortcut that is triggered by a specific hour. Not sure why this post says it can’t be done.

I used it last month to wish someone happy birthday.

ideamotor• 4 years ago

I find as I get older, I want to simplify. I know setting this up would be easy but it’s just one more thing to mess with that isn’t tackling a fundamental issue. The fundamental issue here is why you want to send delayed messages not how.

xyst2• 4 years ago

In my one case, I act as the custodian of the mobile internet provider. the more people I have on my plan, the less everybody else pays (plus much higher leverage w/ the provider). I pay the provider directly, and every individual is expected to pay me their share (including any installment plans on phones).

Instead of manually typing out and sending a response to everybody. Now I can just setup this automation and it will send out my reminder every month. That's 6-7 minutes I save every month just for this use case.

xyst2• 4 years ago

very useful, thanks for sharing!

I ended up configuring the shortcut to use the location field rather than title field. So at least my calendar won't look odd.

Still works as expected. I wasn't entirely sure how to format the text field so it would pick up the phone numbers (in case of group messages). So I just went with my gut and used a space separator for each distinct number and typed the fully qualified number (ie, +1YYYXXXZZZZ)

EGreg• 4 years ago

For what it's worth, our "Groups" app (which has been downloaded by 10 million people in 95+ countries) has offered this kind of feature for years. It lets you set reminders to send mass messages to people. It also does things like list contacts by the time you met them, so if you went to a party last night or a week ago, you can see who you have to follow up with.

We meant to turn it into a full-fledged ORM, but we got busy with the Qbix Platform. Anyway, if you want to give it a try, go here: https://qbix.com/GROUPS

sbaildon• 4 years ago

There’s an automation that’s triggered when you receive an email. Coupled with Mail’s “Send later” feature in iOS 16 and some parsing, you can send messages at any time you want.

avnigo• 4 years ago

Adding a new calendar for this seems odd. You can skip that step and load your messages from the Notes app, or use something like Data Jar [0] to store your messages in the desired structure, alongside the phone number and date/time you expect them to go out on (assuming you have set multiple automations throughout the day that would check if a message needs to be sent out that hour).

Admittedly this is still a bit hacky, but good to see that it's possible.

[0] https://datajar.app/

kritr• 4 years ago

This is a really fun feature. I used this to make automatic birthday messages based on the birthday’s calendar.

Since the contacts app syncs with the birthday calendar, it’s easy enough to map names to phone numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gXL1S4MnyE

Delayed Messages on iOS

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