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Show HN: Schedule iMessage Texts from .txt Files

github.com

122 pointsreidjs69 comments

Annoyingly, iPhones don't have a great way to schedule messages. This around 100 lines of python to schedule iMessage texts from .txt files on your computer.

If this is useful to you, please give it a try and let me know what you think. Thanks.

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If you don’t have an Apple computer but have an iOS device, you can also do something similar with the “Shortcuts.app” + “Calendar.app”.

I have a daily shortcut that runs at X time. Shortcut checks a calendar for events, if today contains one or more events. It will parse the text from these events (comma separated fully qualified phone numbers or iMessage accounts), and send the message contained in the body of the event.

Added bonus here is that I can also send group messages.

If I need to have the message sent on repeat, then I put the cal event on repeat.

I could possibly even have templated messages (ie, insert month and year into message), but I haven’t deep dived into that rabbit hole.

Downside here though is that you need an iOS device to always be on.

I believe you can run shortcuts on an Apple computer too.

yes, you can. But I haven’t tried it myself.

Although if the script has some dependency on iOS or macOS specific function (ie, existence of “Apple script”). Then the shortcut might not be portable between macOS <-> iOS

This sounds like a good solution.

Can you provide an example or two of how you format the events in your calendar to allow them to be sent at a scheduled time by the Shortcuts app?

I’ll publish something soon about it. It was inspired by another post/tweet. But I set that up long ago and do not have the article saved.

Last time i checked you need to swipe to confirm every time your automation attempts to send a message? kinda kills the automation part. I was shocked that there was almost nothing to be automated with messages on IOS as third party apps can't even read or send them. The Tasker app for android is great for this kind of thing.

nah, there’s an option in shortcuts to run without any interaction from user. As long as phone is on/charged. Then it runs.

I have an old iPhone that runs this automation. Haven’t touched it in many months. Still runs without a hitch.

I like reviewing my scheduled messages before sending (maybe the person has said something in the meantime), so the solution I came up with is a shortcut which first asks for text input, then a contact, then the time. All in the best possible interface in context, no need to worry about special syntax or formatting.

The message text is URL encoded, the phone number is auto-retrieved from the contact, then an sms: URL is generated and added to my reminders app. When the time comes, I simply click the link and it auto-populates in Messages, ready to send or tweak.

I like your solution a bit more because it doesn’t require scheduling this script to run on a cron or something. How do you URL encode the message? Could you share the whole shortcut

<a href="sms:+15558675309&body=Hi%20there">Send Message</a>

This could be insanely useful for me. Thank you! It means I could have a private monitoring approach that send myself a message on events I want notifications on? I didn’t even know iMessage allowed sending a self message.

Telegram bots API works well for this FYI, unless there’s a reason you need it in Messages.app

I’ve built something similar with ios shortcuts. One shortcut that uses prompts and data jar to schedule and store messages. It also creates a cal event as a reminder to myself. It supports group texts. Then I have three automations that run in the morning, noon, and afternoon that check for scheduled messages and send them. Works well. Happy to share if interest.

what's the purpose for this?

Sometimes I’m up at 4am and want to send a message to someone at a reasonable hour when they’re not going to be in Do-not-Disturb mode, seems like a good enough way to accomplish. I use Slack “schedule tomorrow for 9am” pretty frequently for the same use case.

I use it more as a reminder system. Someone tells me to checkin next week or in a couple days and I can just schedule the text right then so I dont forget.

why not just use calendar in your phone&cloud?

Out of curiosity couldn't one recreate Twilio just by running an extended version of this from a Macbook?

You could read all inbound messages from the Messages app and reply as well. You could even hook it up to a local LLM and run a small support agent.

Is there ANY reason a small business owner couldn't do this and avoid paying SaaS fees?

It only works for iMessage texts, unfortunately.

But the Messages application can send texts to non-iPhone numbers...

I tried sending to a non iMessage number, it failed to send, but there may be a way.

Might work in areas with huge iMessage market share like North America - I know probably two people with the "green texts"

It can also work for SMSs with some changes in the applescript. We made a very similar tool that use to send automated SMSs to experiment participants 2 times per day. The setup is similar and there is a bash script that is called using cron twice per day and calls a matlab script (similar to the python script here) that calls an applescript. This is the applescript that, in practice, sends iMessage to those with iphone and SMS to those without

https://github.com/earlychildcog/automate_sms_to_participant...

Unfortunately no, Apple has usage limits on iMessage / SMS relaying. Many people hack around this, SendBlue.co being the only long running service, but it's full of the graveyard of folks trying to do this.

What does this mean in practice? I leave my Messages app on my laptop open all day and correspond entirely through it with family. Since I'm typing I send messages rapidly at volume. I've never once hit a limit. Think hundreds of responses a day.

If an app running on my machine has subclassed the Messages app and is reading strings and sending hit strokes to the (Send) button on my behalf, how can Apple possibly rate limit this?

It's probably like those email providers that allows you some number of outbound emails per, but it's like 200 - 1000. High enough that most users won't ever notice, but low enough that there's no way to use the service commercially.

It means test on prod and find out

(lose your main iCloud account... 'bold move Cotton')

By number of different recipients?

“For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”

People (and corporations) will pay a lot of money to have someone else manage and maintain their infrastructure.

This is cool. I like code like this that bandaids over someone's problems. I think all of us have things like this laying around, and it's always cool to be reminded of that fact.

I love scheduled send. I find it amazing iphones still do not have that extremely basic functionality.

I remember when all the basic non-smart phones, like the few Samsung flip phones I had when I first moved to Seoul has this very basic ability. This feature was been dropped in the transition to smart phones for some reason.

Signal has this feature build in, btw.

I use it mostly with my SO as a reminder we send to each other at certain times.

I'm honestly shocked that with all the ways iphone users are supposed to live in a better world than me, they lack this simple, obvious useful ability that the lowliest SMS/MMS user has.

I have honestly never felt the need for this and had to click on a menu that I am ashamed to say I never thought of clicking on but yes, there it is. Scheduled send for SMS. You can even edit the time/ content right there in the UI.

Thanks!

I loathe being forced to use Apple products because there are so many of these simple missing features.

I’m not sure how you are in any way forced to use Apple products

My family and friends primarily use iMessage group threads as social media. There's also a lot of location sharing via Apple.

It's difficult to get most people to switch to something else and impossible to get old people to do it.

In America iMessage has extremely strong network effects. I read about an Android user who carried around an iPhone specifically to avoid having a green bubble with dating prospects.

Thanks for sharing. What do you use it for mostly?

I just built it this morning! I was planning to use it to send myself reminders.

Awesome! I wish iMessage had an api so that you didn’t need to go through a computer to do these things.

? Everything goes through a "computer"...

They probably meant computer as in a desktop OS instead of from their iPhone.

Why not use the Reminders app instead?

Was also planning on using it for sending happy birthday texts

Very useful, thanks for sharing!

This is awesome! I think a certain friend of mine would really like it lol.

Here's an Apple Script moving through iMessage to SMS if required. Make sure to add helpers to update the recipients contact to default to SMS, otherwise you're just cluttering your Messages history with failed messages.

--------

tell application "Messages" set phoneNumber to "+15555555555" set messageToSend to "This is a test!"

try set iMessageService to (1st account whose service type = iMessage) set iMessageBuddy to participant phoneNumber of iMessageService

  if exists iMessageBuddy then
   set theMessage to send messageToSend to iMessageBuddy
   delay 2 -- Wait for a short time to allow the message status to update
   
   if status of theMessage is not "delivered" then
    error "iMessage not delivered"
   else
    log ("sent as iMessage to: " & phoneNumber)
   end if
  else
   error "Not an iMessage user"
  end if
 on error
  try
   set SMSService to (1st account whose service type = SMS)
   set SMSBuddy to participant phoneNumber of SMSService
   send messageToSend to SMSBuddy
   log ("sent as SMS to: " & phoneNumber)
  on error
   log ("ERROR: COULD NOT SEND TO: " & phoneNumber)
  end try
 end try

end tell

Awesome!!!! Thank you

The use of “computer” throughout got me excited. Requires a Mac, yes?

Yep, is AppleScript

Still don’t know how they get around auto send, iMessage required user input last time I tried this

[Edit] Shortcuts still require user interaction, apparently mac does not, that's interesting

On iOS shortcuts you don’t need user interaction if you disable “show when run” on the shortcut.

I'll edit the readme for clarity

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