Well, it's about time. According to a report from Engadget, WhatsApp appears to be developing a message scheduling feature, something users have requested for years and years.

The feature, spotted in development, would let you write a message now and have it send later. Think birthday texts at midnight without staying up, recurring reminders for the friend who always forgets the group plan, and messages that arrive at a reasonable hour for family in other time zones instead of pinging them at 3 a.m. their time because you forgot Melbourne is ahead of us.

If you've never wished for this, I'm guessing you've never had a relative overseas. My granddaughter Jess lives three time zones away during the school year, and I cannot tell you how many times I've typed a message, then sat on it because I didn't want to wake her. Scheduling would solve that little dance entirely.

Now, the usual caveats apply. This was spotted in development, which means there's no confirmed release date, and WhatsApp's parent Meta hasn't said anything official. Features in testing sometimes arrive within months, and sometimes they quietly disappear, like that friend who says they'll help you move. I'd hold off on planning your entire birthday-greeting operation around it just yet.

Scheduling already exists elsewhere, for what it's worth. Telegram has had it for years, and even plain old email lets you schedule sends. Gmail added scheduled send back in 2019, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it changed how I use email. It's such a small thing, but the quality of life improvement is real. WhatsApp arriving late to this particular party is very on brand for an app that still makes you search chats one keyword at a time.

And that's really the test for this feature, same as it always is. Technology should work for you, solving actual problems instead of creating new ones. A schedule button that's buried three menus deep, or that only works for some chat types, won't count. If WhatsApp makes it simple, where you long-press send and pick a time, this becomes one of those features you can't imagine living without.

I'll keep watching for details on how it actually works and when it might roll out, and I'll report back once there's something real to test. In the meantime, set a reminder the old-fashioned way: on a sticky note, like we did in the nineties. It worked just fine.