Can you schedule a message on WhatsApp?

The short answer

Not in an ordinary chat, not yet. On 23 September 2026 neither WhatsApp nor the WhatsApp Business app lets you write a message to one person and choose when it goes out.

It is on its way. WABetaInfo, the independent site that follows WhatsApp’s test versions, still described scheduled messages for chats and groups as in development on 21 August 2026. When they arrive, you will tap and hold the send button, pick a date and time between 10 minutes and two weeks ahead, and WhatsApp will send it without your phone being online. In June the same site reported that the feature wasn’t open even to beta testers and that WhatsApp hadn’t announced a date.

One exception is already live, and it is narrow: the Business app can schedule business broadcasts, the paid promotional sends covered below. For everything else, these are the three ways that work today.

1. iPhone: an automation in Shortcuts

The Shortcuts app that comes with every iPhone can run a WhatsApp action at a set time. These are the steps MakeUseOf published in May 2023; some menu names have changed since, but the route is the same:

1. Open Shortcuts, go to Automation and create a new automation with the Time of Day trigger.
2. Set the time and how often it repeats: daily, weekly or monthly. There is no one-off date.
3. Add WhatsApp’s Send Message action, write the message and pick the recipient.
4. Set the automation to run without asking (older versions of iOS call this turning off Ask Before Running).
5. If WhatsApp is locked with Face ID or Touch ID, switch that lock off, or Shortcuts can’t get in.
6. Once the message has gone, switch the automation off, or it will go again at the next repeat.

What it can’t do: send once on a given date, or send while the phone is off or offline. And test it before you rely on it. Whether iOS lets it through without a tap has changed from one version to another, so send the first one to a colleague, not to a customer.

2. Android: a scheduling app

Android has nothing built in for WhatsApp. The apps in the Play Store that do it, SKEDit being the best known, work by driving WhatsApp for you: at the set time they open the chat, paste the text and press send.

To do that, SKEDit’s own set-up guide (read on 23 September 2026) asks for three things:

• Accessibility permission, which lets the app read and tap your screen.
• No battery optimisation for the app, so Android doesn’t put it to sleep.
• A way past your lock screen: you give it your PIN, you use Smart Lock (which, the guide says, lasts four hours at a time), or you remove the screen lock altogether.

On the phone that holds your customers’ conversations, that is a lot to hand to a third party. Fine for a birthday message. Think twice before running a business on it.

3. WhatsApp Business: broadcasts and the Platform

The Business app has one built-in way to schedule a message you have written, and it is for business broadcasts: a promotional message with a photo and a button, sent to an audience you choose. According to WhatsApp’s help centre, you can send it now or schedule it, you pay for each message delivered, Meta reviews it before it goes out, and it is only available in some countries. It is built for offers, not for telling one customer their car is ready.

The other route is the WhatsApp Business Platform, the version of WhatsApp that connects a number to software. There, a program sends pre-approved messages, called templates, at whatever time it is told: the reminder the evening before, the ‘your part has arrived’ the moment it does. Two conditions come with it:

• Permission. Meta’s Business Messaging Policy only lets a business start a conversation with someone who has given it their number and agreed to receive its messages.
• A price per message, set by the recipient’s country. For a UK number, the official pricing calculator gave £0.0159 for a utility message (a reminder, a status update) and £0.0458 for a marketing one on 23 September 2026. A business in Spain writing to a UK customer pays the UK rate. The full picture is in how much WhatsApp Business costs.

What none of them does

A scheduled message goes out whether or not anything has changed. If the customer cancelled at lunchtime, the 18:00 reminder still arrives. If they reply ‘can we make it Friday?’, nothing on this list reads the answer, let alone moves the appointment.

Scheduling solves ‘send this at 18:00’. It doesn’t solve the conversation that starts a minute later, which is usually the part that takes your time.

When to automate instead

If what you keep scheduling is a hello for new customers or a note that you are closed, you don’t need a scheduler at all. The Business app already sends a greeting and an away message on its own, tied to your opening hours: see WhatsApp Business auto reply.

If it is appointment reminders, confirmations and ‘a slot has come up at 17:30’, the question isn’t when the message leaves. The message should come from your diary, and someone should deal with the reply. That is the job Conserjía does: an assistant on the WhatsApp Business Platform, on your own business account, that sends the reminder from your real diary, reads the answer, moves the appointment when asked and passes anything it doesn’t know to a person. Book a demo and bring a week of the messages you currently schedule by hand.