The Mail app on your iPhone has a lot of fantastic productivity features like unsend emails, follow up reminders, draft drafts from almost any view, repeat option, bulk message selection, and formatting toolbar, but one of the most useful features. it might just be the one you don’t use.
Starting with iOS 16.0, Apple Mail includes a scheduling tool for sending emails at the exact time and date. You always had to use a third-party email client to do this, but no longer. Best of all, it works with any email service you use with Apple Mail, be it iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or another service.
Why bother with email scheduling?
At first, you might think that this is a feature you will never use, but there are actually many reasons why you should probably start scheduling school, work, and even personal email. Here are some examples:
- You will have more time to pick up the letter if you change your mind. Mail’s “Unsend”feature already lets you stop a “sent”email before it’s actually sent, but you only have 10 to 30 seconds to do so. You get a longer delay by scheduling emails to be sent in five, ten, or even 30 minutes without sacrificing your quick response skills or unnecessarily delaying urgent responses.
- You will have time to think about what you have written, in case you want to change or add something at the last minute. If you always send emails prematurely and send follow-ups right away to include anything you forgot, planning can give you time to prevent it from happening again.
- You will be able to send an email to someone in a different time zone at the appropriate time. For example, when you’re ready to hit the send button during the day, it might be 2am at the recipient’s location. Sending automatically in the morning makes it more likely that they will see it.
- You will be more likely to get replies from people who usually miss your emails. For example, if someone only replies to emails you send within a certain time period, schedule all emails for that period to increase your chances of a response. Another example: a colleague might not check their work email over the weekend, so schedule it for Monday so your message doesn’t get drowned in spam, cold emails, and other things they’re likely to ignore.
- You will be able to email important messages to someone as soon as they return from vacation. During their absence, they can step back from their digital lives and receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails when they return. And if they’re like me, they’ll treat them like they never existed.
- You will be able to send repetitive emails that you always forget to do yourself. For example, birthday greetings for a client or old colleague, hints for employees, payment requests, reminders of an upcoming meeting or meeting, and anniversary greetings for family and friends that you don’t want to send in iMessage.
How do you schedule emails?
Launch or open a draft in the Mail app, compose and edit it, add recipients if there aren’t already any, and then press and hold the send button. A menu will appear showing options to automatically send email this night, the next morning, or the selected date and time.
When you select “Submit at 21:00 tonight”or “Submit at 21:00 tonight”, the draft disappears and is ready to be sent. The same goes for “Send at 8:00 tomorrow”or “Send at 08:00 tomorrow”. If you choose “Send Later”, a date and time picker will appear; After setting, click “Finish”.
How to find all scheduled emails?
Whether you choose a preset or a custom time for emails, they will all end up in the “Send Later”folder in the top favorites section of your inbox list. If you don’t see the folder, click Edit and check the Send Later box. You can rearrange the folders so that “Send Later”is closer to the beginning. Click “Done”when you’re done.
Each email in the folder is labeled with the date and time it was automatically sent. If you no longer want to send it, delete it like you would any other draft (long press and tap Trash, swipe left until it disappears, etc.).
How do you edit a scheduled email?
If you want to send the email sooner or later, open the draft and click “Edit”next to “This email will be sent on [date@time]”. You’ll see a date and time picker where you can move it and click Done. There is currently no way to save a draft and delete a scheduled time. The Cancel Send Later button in the date and time picker sounds like it will revert it to an unscheduled draft, but deletes it. Hopefully this will change in future Mail updates.
