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Now you can schedule text messages for the future

If you’ve listened to many of the From Long Distance to Marriage podcast episodes, you’ll know that we talk about how much technology has progressed since we were long distance. In 2006, we had to buy physical international calling cards to phone each other!

(For the record, we’re not old, we just started talking at a young age. Okay? Great.)

Since 2006, everything really has changed. Many of you reading this probably won’t even know what an international calling card is. The iPhone didn’t even exist!

FaceTime, iMessage, Snapchat, Facebook – none of these things existed either.

We had some pretty rudimentary instant messaging apps, but bear in mind that phone apps back then weren’t really a thing either. We don’t want to sound too much like grandparents who say “Back in our day…” but trust us, life was different back then.

Today, the world is smaller than it’s ever been. We truly live in a constantly connected world, where we can talk to people all over the globe instantly, and at no extra cost than sending a text within our own country.

So it’s quite surprising to think that the one app long distance couples don’t have is one that allows them to schedule messages.

Right?

You can schedule emails, and schedule social media posts.

But if you want to schedule a text message, like to send “Happy Birthday!” for a specific time when you aren’t able to send it manually, you’re out of luck.

At least, you were out of luck.

We may look back on 2021 in the same way we look back on 2006 and say “Can you believe we used to live that way?”

We were recently contacted by Gonenc Mete, the developer of a new app called Fext.

“Fext” is short for “future texting” and it’s an iOS app that – yep, you guessed it – let’s you schedule text messages.

Not just written text messages, it lets you schedule:

• Voice messages
• Photos
• Videos

And you can send them at any point in the future. By the way, this isn’t an app that just reminds you to send the message – it actually sends it on your behalf.

Let’s think of some use cases for this.

1. You might be thinking of your partner, but know that if you send a message now, it would wake them up or distract them from work.
2. You can schedule birthday, valentine’s or anniversary messages for upcoming years.
3. While feeling romantic, you can spontaneously create messages and schedule them for random days and times in the near or far future, giving them a happy surprise. You might even be in person when the message arrives!

That’s a winning app already, but Fext has some additional features up its sleeve that we love, too:

• It lets you choose to notify the recipient to expect a message (building some anticipation), or it can be sent as normal
• It has a timezone converter, saving you the mental arithmetic
• It allows you to add links to Spotify and YouTube, as well as add songs to messages, so you can share thoughtful lyrics or romantic songs
• You can even replace the sensor information with an emoji, if you’re feeling playful

Fext has one goal, and it’s one that everyone in a long distance relationship can relate to: it wants to help you be there, when you can’t physically be there.

While every other messaging app focuses on communicating now, Fext is built specifically for those who can’t.

And Gonenc shares our philosophy that long distance relationships have some benefits – in this case, an opportunity to go above and beyond to show that you care.

Fext is available to download from the App Store now. And readers of this blog can get the first three months FREE – just click here to email Gonenc and mention this blog.