How to Schedule Emails to Send Later in Apple Mail on Mac

If you are catching up on administrative work at 2:00 AM on a Saturday, you face a professional dilemma. If you click “Send” immediately, the recipient’s phone will buzz in the middle of the night, which is incredibly rude. Furthermore, it sets a terrible precedent, training your clients or boss to expect you to be available and working on weekends. Instead of saving the email as a draft and trying to remember to manually send it on Monday morning, you can use the built-in Apple Mail app on your Mac to schedule the delivery automatically.

How to Use Send Later in Apple Mail

Apple introduced the “Send Later” feature in macOS Ventura, allowing the Mail app to hold onto a finished message and quietly push it to the server at a predetermined date and time.

1. Open the default Mail app on your Mac.
2. Click the Compose button (the square with a pencil) to start a new message.
3. Fill out the “To” field, write your subject line, and draft your complete email just as you normally would.
4. When you are entirely finished and ready to send, do not click the main Send icon (the paper airplane). Instead, look for the small drop-down arrow located immediately to the right of the paper airplane.
5. Click that drop-down arrow to open the scheduling menu.

Choosing Your Delivery Time

The menu will offer you two quick presets based on your current time, such as “Send Tonight at 9:00 PM” or “Send Tomorrow at 8:00 AM.” If one of those perfectly fits your needs, simply click it.

If you want precise control over the delivery schedule (such as pushing the email out on a specific Tuesday next week):

6. Click on Send Later… at the bottom of the drop-down menu.
7. A small calendar window will pop up. Use the calendar interface to select the exact month and day.
8. Click the time box and type in the exact minute you want the email to dispatch (e.g., 08:15 AM).
9. Click the blue Schedule button.

The compose window will immediately close. Your email will be moved into a temporary, automated folder named “Send Later” in your left-hand sidebar, where it will sit patiently until the exact moment arrives.