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Slack lets you schedule a message to post later in a channel, direct message, or thread. On desktop, use the arrow beside the Send button; on mobile, press and hold the paper-plane Send icon. Pending messages are managed in Drafts & sent, where you can edit, reschedule, send now, or cancel them.
What “delayed message” means in Slack
Slack’s user-facing term is schedule a message or schedule send. You compose the message now, choose a future date and time, and Slack posts it to the selected conversation then. It is useful for preparing an announcement or coordinating across work hours without sending immediately.
Scheduling is different from a reminder: a scheduled message publishes your composed text in a conversation, while a reminder is for prompting someone to follow up or remember a task. A draft is saved text that has not been sent or scheduled. For recurring posts or messages triggered by data or events, consider a workflow or app rather than treating a one-time scheduled message as an automation.
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Schedule a message on desktop
- Open the channel, direct message, or thread where you want the message to appear.
- Compose the message and add any formatting, emoji, or attachments you need.
- Select the arrow beside the paper-plane Send button.
- Choose one of Slack’s suggested times or select a custom date and time.
- Confirm the scheduled send.
The message remains pending rather than appearing as a sent message in the conversation. Slack’s interface labels and menu presentation can change, but the scheduling control is associated with the composer’s Send button. See Slack’s instructions for sending and scheduling messages.
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Schedule a message on mobile
- Open the destination channel, DM, or thread and compose your message.
- Tap and hold the paper-plane Send icon.
- Choose a suggested time or set a custom date and time, then confirm.
If the long press does not show scheduling, check that you are pressing the Send icon in the composer, not a message’s actions menu. Client versions and interface details may differ.
Find and manage scheduled messages
Open Drafts & sent (shown as Drafts & Sent in some interfaces) and choose Scheduled. On mobile, open Drafts & Sent and select Scheduled. This is the place to check when a message seems to have disappeared: it may not show in the channel until its delivery time.
- Edit: Open the pending message, choose Edit, make the change, and save it.
- Reschedule: Open the message’s scheduling controls, choose a new date and time, and confirm.
- Send now: Use the available send-now action to post it immediately.
- Cancel: Delete or cancel the pending message so it will not post.
The exact tap, hover, or menu steps vary by client. Before important announcements, review the Scheduled list: a date, launch time, or project detail can change after a message is queued. Slack’s help documentation describes the available management actions.
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Time zones, delivery, and notifications
Check the date and time shown in Slack’s scheduling dialog before confirming. If you are scheduling for colleagues elsewhere, verify the intended time zone rather than assuming the interface automatically chooses recipients’ local time. Be particularly careful around daylight-saving changes and when using relative choices such as “tomorrow”; an exact date is less ambiguous.
Slack handles the scheduled post, so you do not need to return at that time and click Send. Posting a message and notifying recipients are not the same thing, however. Push, desktop, or other alerts depend on recipients’ notification settings, mentions, channel state, and workspace configuration. Do not assume every scheduled message generates a notification.
When to use a workflow or automation instead
Native scheduled send is a good fit for a single message with a chosen delivery time. If you need weekly stand-up prompts, recurring announcements, conditional messages, approvals, or posts generated from a calendar or ticketing system, look at Slack Workflow Builder or an app/integration. These options require more setup, and their capabilities or availability can depend on workspace configuration and plan. Avoid adding an automation tool for a one-off post unless you need its additional behavior.
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Schedule messages with Slack’s API
Developers can use Slack’s chat.scheduleMessage API method to queue a message for a public channel, private channel, or DM. The request supplies a future Unix timestamp in post_at. For example, the following is illustrative JSON; replace the channel identifier, text, and timestamp with valid values:
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"channel": "C123ABC456",
"text": "Here's a message for you in the future",
"post_at": 1770000000
}Slack documents a maximum scheduling horizon of 120 days. It also limits scheduling to no more than 30 messages for the same channel within a five-minute window; exceeding that can return restricted_too_many. A past timestamp can produce time_in_past, and a timestamp too far ahead can produce time_too_far.
Use chat.scheduledMessages.list to list pending scheduled messages and chat.deleteScheduledMessage to remove one. The documented update approach is not to edit a pending API-scheduled message in place: delete it and schedule a replacement. Slack also warns that scheduled messages using the metadata parameter will not post. Check the API response and the Slack guide to sending and scheduling messages when implementing or troubleshooting.
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If scheduling is missing or a message does not post
- No scheduling arrow: Confirm you are in a channel, DM, or thread and looking beside the composer’s Send button. Try Slack in a browser or another client, reload or update the app, and verify that you can send an ordinary message to that conversation. Permissions and workspace policies still apply.
- Message is not visible in the conversation: Check Drafts & sent → Scheduled; pending messages do not appear as already-posted messages.
- API request failed: Check whether
post_atis in the future and within 120 days, whether the channel exceeded the burst limit, whether the app still has access to the destination, and whether the request included the incompatiblemetadataparameter. - Wrong delivery time: Review the scheduled item’s displayed time and your device’s time-zone settings. Edit or reschedule it if needed.
Slack documents scheduling for channels, DMs, and threads, but permissions and workspace policies still govern whether you can post in a particular conversation. Do not assume identical behavior across every client or workspace configuration.
When another chat app may be a better fit
If your organization already uses another platform, its built-in scheduler may be more convenient than adding an integration. Microsoft Teams supports scheduled chat messages, and Microsoft separately documents channel-message scheduling; its cited channel guidance notes an Android limitation for channel scheduling, which should not be generalized to all Teams message types. Google Chat supports scheduled messages in chats and spaces and documents recipient time-zone visibility in its scheduling interface. Switching platforms just to gain scheduled sending is rarely worthwhile if your team already relies on Slack’s channels, integrations, and workflows.
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