How To: Schedule an email to be sent later?

[r00p]

I just want to do one simple thing: have the computer press the "Send" button while I'm away or asleep.

 

I just spent the last hour trying to exhaust the internet for a way to schedule the sending of an email at a later time or date, but honestly cannot find anything short of MailButler (subscription), SmallCubed Mail Suite ($60 is a bit too steep for just this one feature I need) , sorta/kinda an Automator applet scheduled through Apple Calendar. I searched here with several phrases & wordings, but found nothing relevant. Would there be any way to do this with Alfred? Or, with Alfred + Automator?

 

Any ideas really appreciated!

 

– Rupert

[deanishe]

9 hours ago, r00p said:

Would there be any way to do this with Alfred?

 

To be clear, Alfred is a launcher, not an automation app. It's not designed to tell other apps what to do other than "open this thing right now".

 

You need to write a script to do what you want. Then you can use Alfred to run it. But again, Alfred can only run it "right now", so you'll have to take care of the delay yourself.

 

You haven't actually said which email program you're using, so we can't give you any concrete advice. Without that information, all I can suggest is an AppleScript that waits for however long and then simulates the "Send" hotkey (not press the button—that's much harder to do).

 

In the email client I use, MailMate (which has a send-later function anyway), the hotkey to send an email is ⇧⌘D, so to send an email in 2 hours, I would make sure the window with the email is the top window, and run the following AppleScript:

-- 7200 seconds = 2 hours
delay 7200

-- simulate ⇧⌘D keypress; sent to frontmost window
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "D" using {command down, shift down}

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by deanishe
speling

[r00p]

Deanishe et al –

 

Thank you for reminding me how daft I was here with respect to Alfred being more of a launcher than a "doer". It has the Workflow section, and that what I was thinking about: Had anyone managed to assemble a workflow to allow us to compose an email in Mac OS X's Mail.app, and then simply schedule it to be sent at a later date?  

 

It would appear that you may have just provided that solution above.  I promise to try to assemble my own Alfred Workflow to do just that: Compose a Mac OS X Mail.app email, and have the system invoke the Cmnd+Shift+D (same as MailMate) at a specified time in the future. I'll let you know if I get stuck.

 

Thank you again, Deanishe

 

– Rupert