Remembering things is getting tougher and tougher every day. One second I'm thinking I should reach out to my uncle to ask how he's been doing after his surgery, the next it's out of my mind and it doesn't come back until many days later and I feel like the most horrible niece ever. I've used to-do lists and calendar events even to remind me to message someone, but when that notification pops up, I keep snoozing it until I find the time to write the actual message. Messaging people and staying in touch isn't easy with our hectic lives, whether it's birthday greetings or simple "hey, how are you?" or the daily "I reached work safely" or "I'm leaving work now" notices you send to your significant other. And that's where Scheduled comes into play. It's a simple app for writing and scheduling your messages, so you can put your mind to rest and send them at the appropriate time with a few taps. Plus, it works with multiple messaging platforms including WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, SMS, and more.

Walkthrough

Upon opening Scheduled for the first time, you're asked to enable notifications from the app then give it access to your Contacts and SMS apps. Once that's done, you're taken to the compose screen, which is pretty straightforward: recipient(s), future date and time, options to repeat, auto-send toggle, and message text. After you're done preparing your message, you tap the checkmark and it goes into your message list.

The interface is very clean and a pleasure to look at, with special touches like a bright pop-up when you tap on a recipient so you can remove them if you've changed your mind. It also uses your contact photos if available, and if not, assigns a nice icon with their initials.

Once a message's due time rolls around, you get a notification to remind you. Tapping on it takes you to the compose screen where you can still make edits, if needed, or tap the send button to fire it off. There are several built-in options like SMS, Copy (puts the text in your clipboard), Email, and depending on which messaging apps you have pre-installed, you may find WhatsApp or Telegram or more options. Some of these will automatically send a message, others will open a share menu to the app (I'll get to that later).

If at any point, you decide you want to edit or delete a message, you can do so from the app's main screen. Swiping on a message there also lets you duplicate or archive it. Oh and once a repeating event is over, Scheduled automatically creates a message for the next occurrence. That's neat.

The app doesn't have a lot of settings and options. You can import your birthdays if you want to be reminded to reach out to your contacts, enable/disable notifications from the app, and manage the different messaging services. For example, if you'll never need Email, you can remove it from the send menu.

This is also where you can sign up for the Premium upgrade. All of the app's features are free but ad-supported, except the SMS auto-send option. That one requires a $0.99/month subscription. Given that Scheduled previously played a fullscreen 1-minute video with sound when you composed any message, and the devs needed that monetization to keep it going but listened to us when we complained about it, I think the $0.99 monthly subscription is a fair compromise. If you pay that sum, you won't see any ads and you'll get auto-send, which could potentially be a relationship saver in some instances.

Limitations

I mentioned above that sending a message through an app will either directly send it or open the share menu. The latter is the case with WhatsApp, and that appears to be an API limitation from WhatsApp itself. Even if you tell Scheduled which person and phone number should receive your message, it can't automatically open that conversation and have the message ready to go in WhatsApp. But that API limitation doesn't exist for other apps, so if you choose to send a message over Facebook Messenger or Telegram, for example, it will be filled in your conversation with that specific contact.

Another thing to consider is that Scheduled's auto-send only works for SMS. Since we almost never use SMS in Lebanon, that makes the feature moot for me, but in other countries (read: US) where SMS is still the prevalent form of communication, it can be much more handy.

Final thoughts

I'm sure there are several apps that do the same job as Scheduled, but I quite like the inviting and smooth interface of this one and its simple functionality. It can be a handy tool for messaging people on their birthdays, keeping in touch with some friends or relatives you rarely see, and for those daily messages you send to your partner to let them know you reached work/home safely or you're leaving now. The usefulness of the app will be a little hindered if you rely on WhatsApp, like I do, but other messengers should be fine, and SMS does get the special auto-send feature. If you want to give it a go, Scheduled is free to try, with ads, and the $0.99/month subscription removes them and gives you auto-send.