WhatsApp is cooking up a mind-blowing upgrade that might surprise even longtime users

With over a billion downloads across both the Play Store and App Store, WhatsApp is probably one of the most popular messaging apps available for smartphones. It comes with many interesting features like high-quality image sharing, chat lock, built-in access to Meta AI, and much more. However, there’s one feature that you would expect all messaging apps to have, but for some reason it isn’t available in WhatsApp. We’re talking about message scheduling. Fortunately, that’s coming very soon.

Hey Meta, what took you so long to introduce this on WhatsApp?

Meta has added plenty of important updates to WhatsApp in recent times, like redesigning its status section, making the app more private, and more. Now, it is reported to add the message scheduling feature, which I believe would probably be one of the most requested upgrades.

The mention of this upgrade has reportedly been spotted in a recent TestFlight beta of the WhatsApp iOS app, suggesting that Meta is working on it and that it could soon land on the stable build. A screenshot of the Group Info interface has also been shared, which shows the Scheduled Messages menu listed among the available options.

As you can imagine, it will allow you to schedule a message to be sent later. The feature will really prove to be useful in situations where you want to wish someone a happy birthday at exactly 12:00 a.m., but think you might forget to do so if you get caught up in some other work. In this case, you could use this feature to write the birthday wish message and then schedule it to be sent exactly at 12:00 a.m.

WhatsApp’s main rivals have had this feature for years

Scheduled Messages option in the Group Info interface. | Image by WABetaInfo

There are plenty of rivals of WhatsApp, such as Signal, Messenger, iMessage, and more. However, if I had to choose one, I would say Telegram is probably one of its main competitors. While Meta could introduce message scheduling to its messaging app sometime in 2026, Telegram has had this option since 2019.

Telegram also supports a “Repeat” option, which allows you to send a particular message automatically at regular intervals. This add-on is really helpful for sending recurring messages, like a reminder to perform a particular task at regular intervals. I am eager to see whether WhatsApp will get any such extra benefits or whether it will just be a scheduling upgrade.

Interestingly, Instagram, which is also owned by Meta, comes with the option to schedule messages to deliver later. I really don’t know what took the company this long to bring such a useful upgrade to their main messaging app.

All that said, the capability is in its very early stages. Once its development is complete, it will be made available to select beta testers who will provide their feedback and experience of using it. After all this, it will roll out to the general audience. So, I guess there are still many weeks left before we can use this WhatsApp capability in our day-to-day life.