Later
Invite only

Write now.
Deliver at the right time.

Later delivers your WhatsApp messages at a good hour for whoever receives them, not for you.

No sign-up, no password, no payment details.

What happens today

It’s not that you forget. It’s that it is never a good hour.

Something occurs to you for someone far away. It is eleven at night where you are and four in the morning where they are. So you leave it for later — and later is never.

It is not a problem of memory or of caring. It is a problem of timing, and that has a fix.

Not a reminder.
The message, delivered.

An alarm tells you, and you still have to be free to write. Later sends the message on its own, at the exact hour, even with your phone switched off.

You save it for later You forget
You set an alarm It tells you; the message still has not gone
You leave it in drafts Nobody opens drafts
You send it anyway Their phone rings in the middle of the night
You schedule it in Later It lands at nine in their morning

Benefits

What it does for you

It works out the timezone for you

No arithmetic, no looking up how many hours apart you are. Later proposes a sensible hour where that person is and shows both times together: theirs and yours.

It goes out without you

At the scheduled hour the message is sent through your WhatsApp even if you are asleep or your phone is off. And if something fails, it tells you instead of losing it silently.

Your contacts are already there

Nothing to import or type in. Your WhatsApp contacts appear on their own, each with their local time next to the name.

Birthdays you stop missing

Note the date once and choose: it reminds you, or it sends the greeting for you. It repeats every year without you touching it again.

Work and personal life

Your contacts split in two groups, treated differently

You don’t message your boss at eight on a Sunday evening. Your sister, you do. Each contact is marked as one of the two, and Later changes the rules accordingly.

Work

It respects the working day

Clients, colleagues, suppliers. Nothing that ruins anyone’s weekend.

Hours
9:00 to 17:00Office hours in the contact’s own timezone
Days
Monday to FridayWeekends are left out
Holidays
SkippedIt knows the public holidays of their country
Personal

Looser, as it should be

Family, friends, the people who matter. No office hours.

Hours
9:00 to 20:00Three hours more room than work
Days
Every daySaturdays and Sundays included
Holidays
Not skippedA holiday is a good day to write to a friend

That last row is the difference you feel most. A holiday is exactly when you don’t want to send anyone work, and exactly when you do want to greet a friend. Later reads it that way without you having to think about it. Above both groups sit two limits that are never crossed: nothing before 8 in the morning or after 8 at night in the recipient’s time. All of it is adjustable, or you can override it contact by contact.

How people use it

What people use it for

Four situations where the time difference stops being a problem.

1

Family and friends far away

The ones who left, the ones who stayed. You write when you remember and it lands when that person is awake and has time to actually reply.

I write on Sunday night and it reaches them Monday at noon.

2

Work across timezones

A work message at two in the morning apologises before it asks for anything else. Schedule it for the start of their day and it arrives when it can be acted on.

I leave it ready at night and it lands 9:00 their time, before standup.

3

Birthdays and dates

The greeting on time, on the right day and at a sensible hour in their city. Without depending on you remembering that particular morning.

I loaded twelve birthdays one afternoon and haven’t missed one since.

4

The late-night idea

Something occurs to you late and you don’t want to lose it or wake anyone. Write it while it is fresh and let it go out first thing tomorrow.

I write it when it hits me and they read it over breakfast.

Privacy

Nobody reads your messages

It is your WhatsApp and they are your conversations. Later does exactly one thing with them: delivers them on time.

  • Your address book is not stored. Your contacts’ names and numbers are never written to any database.
  • No person reads them. Delivery is automated end to end. There is no internal tool that can look at message content.
  • Encrypted, and briefly. Pending messages are encrypted with AES-256 and the text is deleted an hour after it is sent.
  • You erase it whenever you want. One button removes your session, your queue and your notifications. No backups survive it.

Later is an unofficial WhatsApp client, so it is worth using it as what it is: a personal tool. No bulk sending, no messaging people who are not in your contacts, and a person’s volume rather than a company’s. It is built so that this is what happens by default. Read the full policy

Don’t let distance eat the relationship

Later is invite only. If someone gave you a code, that is all you need: no sign-up, no password, no payment details.