WhatsApp is testing a feature that lets users schedule messages between ten minutes and two weeks ahead, spotted in an Android beta by WaBetaInfo. The main business use for it, sending work messages outside hours, is regulated across much of Europe, and nothing marks a delivered message as scheduled.
WhatsApp is testing a way to schedule messages. Users hold the send button, pick a delivery time and the message goes out on its own. The window runs from ten minutes ahead to two weeks.
The feature appeared in an Android beta spotted by WaBetaInfo, Engadget reported. It is reaching some testers now, with wider access expected over the coming weeks.
The change lands harder here than in America. WhatsApp has around 500 million monthly users in Europe out of roughly two billion worldwide, and it carries work conversations that Americans hold elsewhere.
Mechanically it is unremarkable. Scheduled messages send at the chosen time even with the app closed, carry text, links, photos and video, and keep end-to-end encryption.
WaBetaInfo found limits Engadget does not mention. Only one photo or video can go in a scheduled message, and in a group it reaches only the people who were members when it was set.
Telegram has offered this since 2019, so WhatsApp is catching up rather than inventing anything.
What matters is the use case being advertised. Handling work messages outside hours is a legal question in much of Europe, and France made ignoring after-hours email a right in 2017 for firms with more than 50 staff.
Others followed. Italy legislated the same year, Spain in 2018, Belgium in 2018 and again in 2022, then Portugal, Ireland and Greece in 2021 and Slovakia in 2024.
Portugal went furthest. Its labour code restricts contacting staff outside working hours except in emergencies, with inspectorate fines attached, in a bloc where employee monitoring must already be necessary and proportionate.
Scheduling is therefore a compliance tool as much as a convenience. A manager writes at eleven at night, and the message arrives at nine in the morning.
Nothing marks it as scheduled. WaBetaInfo says recipients cannot see that a message was held, and get no notification if the sender deletes it first.
That moves the timestamp rather than the working hours. The eleven o’clock message still got written at eleven, and the record will say otherwise.
There is still no EU-wide rule. Parliament called for a right-to-disconnect directive in 2021 and it remains in drafting, so the protections stay national and uneven.