Apple released the first public beta of iOS 18 on July 15, a little over a month after the tech giant announced the software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The update brings a bunch of new features to your iPhone, including RCS notifications and more ways to customize your home screen. But one new feature — which can help you send notes like birthday messages ahead of time — is the ability to schedule messages to be sent later.
Read more: An Expert’s Guide to iOS 18 Beta Features
I recommend only downloading a beta on something other than your primary device. Since this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, the update may be buggy and your battery life may be poor, so it’s best to keep those issues on a secondary device. I downloaded iOS 18 on my older iPhone XR to keep those issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Note: The beta is not the final version of iOS 18, so there may be more features available on your iPhone when iOS 18 launches. Apple has said iOS 18 will be released to the public this fall, but no firm date has been set.
Here’s how to schedule messages to send minutes, hours, or days later.
How to schedule messages to send later
1. Open To inform.
2. Go to the correct chat.
3. Tap the plus (+) sign next to the text box.
4. Crane Send later — you may have to tap More to see this option.
You can now send reminders to people so you don’t forget later.
Your text box will now display the following: Send later, and a blue bar will appear indicating when your message will be delivered. You can tap this bar to adjust the date and time.
However, you can only schedule a message up to two weeks in advance, even though the date wheel shows months in advance. For example, if it’s July and you try to schedule a message to send in December, the date wheel will automatically revert back to two weeks from your current date. This may be a bug in the iOS 18 beta and may be fixed later.
Once you have selected the date and time to send your message, tap the text box to bring up your keyboard again. Type your message and hit the Send button.
What a message looks like when you schedule it to be sent later.
After you hit send, your message will appear in the chat with a dotted line and a message over it indicating when the message will be sent. There is also a button that says Editing.
To tap Editing opens a dropdown menu with the options to To send a message, Edit Time And delete messageHowever, if you want to edit the content of the message, you need to long press on the message itself and click Editing as you would do with a message you have already sent.
If you know that a friend’s birthday is in a week or two, you can schedule a message now to send later. That way you won’t forget their birthday on the big day.
Keep in mind that iOS 18 is still in beta, so these features may be buggy or not work properly. There will likely be more beta versions before the OS is released to the public, so Apple has plenty of time to address any issues. There is no word yet on when Apple will release iOS 18.
For more information about iOS 18, here’s my hands-on experience with it the first public betawhat you need to know about RCS messages and our iOS 18 cheat sheet.
Look at this: iOS 18 Hands-On: Exploring the Big Design Changes
