Scheduled messages

Some messages are right, just not right now. Aftercare check-ins, a nudge two days before a sitting, the "how is it healing" note you always mean to send and never do. A scheduled message lets you write it while it is in your head and hand Maelo the timing.

Open the client's conversation, tap the menu in the header, and choose Schedule a message. Working from a request instead? The composer there has a Schedule button beside the send controls that opens the same thing.

Anything already sitting in the reply box comes with you, so half a message you started typing is not wasted.

The panel has two tabs. Compose is where you write, and it works exactly like the normal reply box. When is the calendar: pick a day, then a time. It starts you at 10am, which is usually close enough to just tap past.

The times are read in your own timezone by default, shown as a chip you can change if you are quoting someone in another country and want the message to land in their morning rather than yours. Whatever you choose is remembered next time.

A line along the bottom always tells you what will happen, in plain words, such as sending on a given date at a given time. When it says you have not written anything yet, or not picked a time, that is your remaining job. Tap Schedule send and it is set.

A scheduled message is not filed away somewhere you have to go and look. It sits at the bottom of that client's thread as a faded, dashed bubble, exactly where it will appear once it sends.

Underneath it, Maelo counts down: sending in three days, in four hours, in ten minutes, along with the exact date and time. So the next time you open that conversation, you can see at a glance that you have already said something and do not need to say it twice.

The waiting bubble has two buttons. The pencil is Reschedule, which opens a small panel to pick a new day and time and press Save. The cross is Cancel scheduled message, and it takes effect immediately with nothing to confirm, so be sure before you tap it.

You can move the timing as often as you like, but you cannot edit the words once it is scheduled. To change what it says, cancel it and schedule a new one. It takes about as long as an edit would have.

Once a message has sent, it is an ordinary message. It can be edited or deleted like any other, from the thread itself.

Scheduled messages are text only. Photos have to go in a normal message, and the panel says so rather than dropping them quietly. There is no limit on how far ahead you can schedule, or on how many you can have waiting at once. The only rule is that the time has to be in the future.

Delivery is checked every minute, so a message set for 10am arrives at 10am or a few seconds after. Once it lands it behaves like anything else you send, including the read ticks described in messaging clients.