tmasthay / schedule-texts-from-txt

Schedule iMessage or SMS texts from .txt files.

schedule-texts-from-txt

Schedule iMessage or SMS texts from .txt files from your Mac.

Send messages

1. Clone this repo to your computer.
2. Open SETTINGS.txt and replace the number after myself=... to an iMessage capable phone number. Replace the number after sms_myself=... to any working phone number.
3. Open your terminal to this project directory and run these commands in order
   1. virtualenv venv
   2. source activate.sh
   3. pip install -r requirements.txt
   4. python send_scheduled_messages.py
4. 💬 If everything went well, you should receive an iMessage text that says "Hello from iMessage!", and an SMS text that says "Hello from SMS!"

How it works

The script parses files in the scheduled_messages directory that follow this filename format: Text {person} {datetime}.txt. You can set this directory in the SETTINGS.txt file. Every file with a {datetime} after your system's current datetime will be sent immediately*.

1. The first word in the filename must be Text.
2. The second word, {person} must be the persons identifier. This is set in SETTINGS.txt, e.g., bob=1234567890 would set bob's phone number to 1234567890. If {person} starts with sms_ like sms_bob, then the text will send via SMS.
3. Everything following the name, before the .txt, is considered the {datetime}. Many formats may work, but this is the only one I have tested: Month D, YYYY HH:MM(AM|PM), for example March 9, 2024 7:25AM. You can also use the keyword now or asap as a datetime to send texts immediately.
4. After a message is sent, it will move the message to the sent folder in your scheduled_texts directory.

*Will only send texts with {datetime} less than MAX_OVERTIME_MINS, 30 minutes by default. This is to prevent accidentally sending really old messages. For example, if you had this script running on a cron that failed then restarted a week later, you probably don't want those week-old messages to send.

Help & Feedback

Please create a GitHub issue if you have feedback or need help. Thanks!

Made by Reid JS on March 9, 2024