The scheduled submission is published in Google Messages

You can actually schedule messages in Gmail and Telegram (among others), and now the Google Messages app is joining the club. The job appeared to a small number of people as part of an A / B testing at the start of November, and is now starting to spread more widely, at least in the United States. The option replaces the long press shortcut to send a multimedia message with a subject.

Since the rolling has just started, it may take a little while for you to schedule messages on your phone. You can check if you got the feature by clicking and holding the send button in chat, which should open either the table dialog or the old MMS topic interface. In the first case, a new dialog pops up that lets you schedule a message – but note that it will only be sent if your phone is on and has a connection at the time. You can either choose from a set of pre-set times and dates or select a specific moment. The scheduled message will appear in your chat as a preview, which you can click if you want to delete or change the text.

Above: Press and hold the send button to schedule.

Below: Edit scheduled messages by clicking on it.

If you are wondering how to add an MMS subject line with scheduled messages enabled, look for the New Subject Display field entry in the complete three-dot list in the upper right corner of the chat.

Since Google canceled Allo and started focusing on RCS, it has put a lot of effort into making messaging a viable alternative to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Co. On top of features like categories and smart attachment suggestions, it’s got some SMS – specific tricks like the option to automatically delete one-time passwords after 24 hours. You can download the latest version from the Play Store or more than one APK Mirror, but note that even the demo version will not necessarily send the timeline to you. You’ll have to wait and hope that the server-side rollout reaches you sooner rather than later.

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