AARP Hearing Center
Stop me if this sounds familiar: You’re on your computer at odd hours and draft a business email.
Before you click Send, you realize it’s Saturday morning or late at night and decide to hold off because the recipient isn’t likely to be checking messages. Plus, if you send your email on a weekend, it could be one of hundreds stacked up in an inbox come Monday morning and may not get the attention it deserves.
![member card Image Alt Attribute](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/experience-fragments/uxdia-folder-structure/en/features/membership/inline-membership-promo/default/master5/_jcr_content/root/responsivegrid/container_copy/container/articleimage.coreimg.75.1140.png/content/dam/uxdia/membership-card-d-and-t.png)
LIMITED TIME OFFER: Labor Day Sale!
Join AARP for just $9 per year with a 5-year membership and get a FREE Gift!
Email marketing experts, such as those at Mailshake, say off-hours and weekends are the worst time to send a message if you want someone to open and reply to it. You can save your work as a draft, but you must remember to send it later.
You don’t need to send yourself a calendar reminder. Why not schedule the email to land when you want, immediately after you write it?
Most popular email services have a send-later or delay-delivery feature, which can come in handy for those who don’t work 9 to 5 or live in a different time zone than the email recipient. Yahoo! Mail, the fourth most popular email provider as of October 2022, does not support scheduled email, so you’ll need to use a third-party tool such as Later.io or Mailbird.com.
Here’s how to write now and send later on a computer. The process should be similar on the providers’ mobile apps.
Apple Mail: A reason to update to macOS 13
Open the Apple Mail app on your Mac laptop or desktop or log into iCloud.com and click on your Mail tab. To take advantage of this delay-send feature, you must have macOS 13, the most recent operating system also known as Ventura.
1. Write your email, but don’t click Send yet.
2. At the top of the screen, to the right of the Send icon that looks like a paper airplane will be a small downward caret v. Click on it to see four options: Send Now, Send 9:00 PM Tonight, Send 9:00 AM Tomorrow or Send Later…, which will allow you to customize your time.
3. Choose Send Later… to see options for a date and time. When done, click Schedule. If you use the iCloud version on the web, your message will be sent even if your computer is turned off.