iOS is a fully-featured operating system and it has plenty of useful capabilities, especially now that mobile hardware is powerful enough to support the latest software advancements. However, one of the features that’s still not available is the ability to schedule iMessage and SMS in iOS Messages.
Apple didn’t implement this feature in the iOS Messages app, but those with jailbroken devices can easily get this capability. There are several tweaks that let you set a date and time for a message to be sent, but one of the latest ones is particularly worthy of attention.
How to schedule iMessage and SMS in iOS Messages app
Kairos is a Cydia tweak that works with iOS 8 and iOS 9 devices, allowing you to set a custom time delay for sending iMessage and SMS via the stock Messages app. You can quickly access its options menu by long-pressing the Send button. There you can set the time when you want your message to be sent. This is a very convenient way to access this set of options, keeping the screen uncluttered at the same time.
You can also switch between iMessage and SMS from the same menu, plus there’s a button that lets you see all the scheduled messages and remove items from the list if such is the case.
A particularly interesting feature of Kairos is its ability to disable Airplane Mode. If Airplane Mode is enabled when a message needs to be sent, the tweak toggles it off, sends the message and then turns Airplane Mode back on. Definitely a useful feature, that lets you not worry about your scheduled messages, knowing they will always be sent, regardless what settings you choose to keep enabled.
While I’m pretty sure Apple won’t implement a message scheduling feature that will automatically toggle off Airplane Mode, even a basic one if still better than nothing, as not everyone can or wants to jailbreak their device.
Until then, if you need to schedule iMessage and SMS in iOS Messages app, and you have a jailbroken device, you can download Kairos for $0.99 from Cydia’s BigBoss repo.
