Slack is rolling out a new scheduled send feature

Slack has announced a new Scheduled Send feature that the company is starting to roll out today, which — as the name implies — will let users schedule messages to send at a later time and date.

The scheduled send feature adds a new drop-down arrow to the green “send message” button in Slack’s desktop app. Clicking it will reveal a new menu that allows for scheduling a message to send to a room, direct message, or group thread later on. Mobile users will be able to access a similar menu by long-pressing on the send button in the Slack app on Android and iOS.

Slack will offer both pre-filled options (like “tomorrow morning at 9:00AM”) as well as the ability to set a custom date and time to send a message. Messages can be scheduled up to to 120 days in advance, and users will be able to reschedule, edit, or delete scheduled messages before they’re sent.

“Today we launched Scheduled Send to empower users to communicate and collaborate in a way that works best for them,” the company announced in a statement, explaining that “teams shouldn’t be obligated to sync their schedules in order to communicate effectively.”

The ability to schedule messages is a critical one given the various time zones and locations that offices — both remote, in-person, and hybrid — stretch across in today’s work world. And while email services like Gmail have offered the ability to schedule emails for later (so that users aren’t pinging teams at odd hours or getting messages lost overnight), the feature has been notably absent from Slack until now.