Tell me more ×
Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 13 down vote favorite
2

Back in the day, I remember having an e-mail program (perhaps it was Eudora?) that could schedule the sending of mail, so when composing a message, you could set some preference for when it would be sent. The message would be composed and queued up, but would not send until the computer was connected to the internet at or after the schedule time.

Is there a way to duplicate this feature in Apple Mail? Specifically, I want to compose a message, but rather than clicking "Send", I click "Delayed send" (either from the Services menu, the AppleScript menu, or, ideally, from an icon magically added to the Mail toolbar, but I don't expect that will be easy to pull ofF). When I do this, I'd get a dialog box asking me when I want to send the message. I enter the information, and the message is queued up and will be sent at the soonest time after the scheduled send time/date when the computer is on and connected.

share|improve this question
1  
Is a third-party app or service acceptable? – timothymh Mar 24 '12 at 2:13
If I can invoke it from Mail and it is installed on my computer (i.e. not mailing a message to some custom address where their server sends it later), sure. – Daniel Lawson♦ Mar 24 '12 at 2:14
1  
Seems like most of us had the same idea. ;-) – afragen Mar 24 '12 at 2:27
1  
@afragen True that... – timothymh Mar 24 '12 at 2:32
This would be a great feature, as sometimes you want to send email to oversea clients and have it hit their inbox when they will in fact be at their computers, or to send stuff that gets to offices at the start of business and not buried in the overnight mail.... – user37881 Jan 4 at 16:49

3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Mail Scripts by Andreas Amann claims to have this functionality, by using iCal's "Run Script" alarm feature:

Schedule Delivery (Mail)

Allows you to send individual messages at predefined times (this script uses iCal for scheduling message delivery).

However, the author also says that some scripts have been broken in 10.7—because of this, the Schedule Delivery script might not work.

Fortunately, it is also possible to achieve the same effect manually using iCal and Automator:

  1. Open Automator and create an iCal Alarm.

  2. Use the tasks "New mail message" and "Send Outgoing Messages" and customize them as required. (Fig. 1)

  3. Save and move the event in iCal to when you want the message to be sent. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 1:

Automator scripts

Fig. 2:

iCal event

share|improve this answer
Unfortunately, Andreas Amann's Mail Scripts is broken in OS X 10.7. I tried it and it did not work. I wish there was another simple solution that works on 10.7 and now 10.8. – user27757 Aug 21 '12 at 5:50
@manuel does the iCal example that makes up the majority of this work for you. Others have up voted this, so it's likely to work. – bmike♦ Feb 10 at 3:30
up vote 0 down vote

The simplest way I know is to save a draft and then set a reminder on iOS so I get bugged to hit send.

It's not ideal, but works in practice when the sending of a message at the exact moment is worth more to me than uninterrupted sleep (or whatever else might be going on in my life).

share|improve this answer
1  
Out of curiosity, do you think this is a better idea than setting an iCal alarm that automatically sends the message? If one is already depending on iCal, why not let iCal do all the work? – Daniel Lawson♦ Apr 14 '12 at 21:48
1  
Not at all - if you don't mind the formatting of iCal - that is a far superior answer. I just wanted to put an "outside the box" answer up. – bmike♦ Apr 15 '12 at 0:03
up vote 4 down vote

No promises, because some of the scripts break under OS X 10.7 Lion, but you might find your answer by using Andreas Amann's Mail Scripts which includes

Schedule Delivery (Mail)

Allows you to send individual messages at predefined times (this script uses iCal for scheduling message delivery).

Andreas makes the source code of his compiled scripts available. You can download the .dmg

share|improve this answer
I don't know if the specific script will still work, but try Mail Scripts from Andreas Amann. There is a Schedule Delivery script that used to create an iCal event that would trigger the message being sent. – afragen Mar 24 '12 at 2:24
Mail Scripts plus energy saver scheduling a start/wake event might be a great combination to ensure the Mac gets up to send your most important message (assuming you might have several queued). – bmike♦ Apr 14 '12 at 20:44

protected by Community♦ Feb 10 at 3:28

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.