Screencast
Messages Basics
Drafts can send messages using Apple’s Messages app with the Message action step. The Message step works by opening a Message window pre-filled with information configured in the action step – which can include the text of the message, and also it’s recipients.
Since the app uses the Message app’s own interfaces, Message will be sent exactly as they would if you opened the Messages app to send them. Recipients can be iMessage or SMS/MMS and messages initiated in Drafts will go into the same conversation history as if they were sent in Messages.
Drafts ships with a default Message action which takes the full text of the current draft and pre-fills it ready to send in the Messages window. You then add one or more recipients, and tap the send button.
Customizing Message Actions
Message action steps can be configured to include one or more pre-defined recipients. Recipients can be added by selecting from contacts or simply entering valid phone numbers or iMessage-enabled email addresses separated by commas.
Message action steps also have a template that defines the text to be inserted. This template typically defaults to [[draft]] which inserts the content of the current draft, but can contain other boilerplate text or template tags.
Messages App
In addition to being use to send messages, Drafts offers an iMessages app which allow text from drafts to be inserted into conversations from the Message app. You can find details about using Drafts as a snippet library in the Messages app on our documentation site.
Scripting
Note that the functionality of the Messages action step can also be used from scripted actions using the Message object. Details and example code at the scripting reference.