In this article
The blue send arrow does one thing when you tap it and three more when you hold it. Underneath are the options for messages that are ready now but should not arrive now.
It is the least discovered useful feature in Telegram, because nothing on the screen suggests the button has a menu. Once you know, the two-in-the-morning message to a colleague in another time zone stops being a choice between waking them and forgetting.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Open the hidden menu on the send button, on phone and on desktop.
- check_circle Queue a message to go the moment the other person opens Telegram.
- check_circle Deliver something immediately without making a sound on their phone.
- check_circle Schedule to a date and time, and find the queue again to change your mind.
Hold the arrow rather than tapping it. The menu is the entire feature and nothing on the screen advertises it.
schedule_send The message waits on the servers, not on your phone
Everything in this menu is handled by Telegram rather than by your device. Once you have chosen, you can close the app, run the battery flat or leave the country: the message still goes at the moment you asked for.
A queued message is also still yours. Until it leaves, it sits in a scheduled area of the chat that only you can see, where it can be rewritten, rescheduled or thrown away. Nothing has been delivered, so changing your mind costs nothing.
Four ways to press send
The same message, four different arrival times. The choice is about the other person's attention, not about your convenience.
bolt A normal tap
person_search Send When Online
notifications_off Send Without Sound
schedule Schedule Message
The useful default for work across time zones: Send When Online for anything that needs an answer, Without Sound for anything that does not.
settings Reaching the menu
- Write the message, or attach the media Everything below works the same for text, photos, albums and files.
- Hold the send arrow Press and hold on a phone; right-click it on desktop and macOS. The options appear over the chat.
- Choose the timing Send When Online, Send Without Sound, or Schedule Message with a date picker.
- Find it again if you need to A scheduled message lives in the chat's scheduled view, reachable from the small calendar marker by the input field. Only you can see it.
- Forget about it Nothing needs to stay open. The servers hold the message and send it.
visibility_off The privacy setting that removes an option
Send When Online needs to know when the other person comes online, so it is only offered when your account can see that. Telegram's Last Seen controls are reciprocal: hide yours from everyone and you stop seeing other people's precise status too, which quietly takes this option away in most chats.
That is a reasonable trade and worth making deliberately rather than discovering. If the menu is missing an entry you expected, this is almost always why — either their setting or yours.
This page is the menu behind the send button. The curriculum step takes scheduling seriously as a publishing tool: building a queue that runs for weeks, choosing hours that suit an audience rather than you, and where automation takes over from doing it by hand.
At a glance
- 1Hold Send
Press and hold the send button for the hidden options.
- 2When online
Send When Online delivers as soon as they open Telegram.
- 3Silent or scheduled
Send without sound, or pick a date and time.
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