Quiet hours

Nobody wants a text from a business at 11:40 PM. While it's quiet hours, BlueBot accepts every text you send and holds it until morning, then sends them in order at your pace. Quiet hours are on from the start, 9:00 PM to 8:00 AM in your account's time zone.

What happens to a text sent at night

Dana's booking app sends a reminder at 10:40 PM. BlueBot answers 201 with the text queued and a hold:

{
  "state": "queued",
  "hold": {
    "reason": "quiet_hours",
    "until": "2026-11-14T14:00:00.000Z",
    "description": "Waiting for quiet hours to end at 8:00 AM tomorrow."
  }
}

At 8:00 AM it goes, with any other texts that waited overnight, one after another at your pace. Fourteen texts that waited go between 8:00 and about 8:04, at the default of 20 seconds apart. Nothing about the text changes while it waits, and you don't need to send it again.

A scheduled text whose send_at falls inside quiet hours does the same: it becomes queued at its send_at and waits for the morning. To have it go at a set time, schedule it for after quiet hours end.

How the window is read

• Start and end are clock times, HH:MM on a 24-hour clock, in your account's time_zone.
• A start later than the end crosses midnight. 21:00 to 08:00 is 9 PM tonight to 8 AM tomorrow.
• A start earlier than the end stays within one day. 12:00 to 13:30 holds texts over lunch and nowhere else.
• The start is inside the window and the end isn't. With 21:00 to 08:00, a text at 9:00 PM waits and a text at 8:00 AM goes.
• The same start and end means no quiet hours. To turn them off, set enabled to false instead, which keeps your times for when you turn them on again.
• Daylight saving time doesn't move them. The end is 8:00 AM by the clock on the day it falls, so the night the clocks change is an hour longer or shorter, and the morning still starts at 8:00.

Whose time zone

Quiet hours follow your account's time_zone unless you turn on smart quiet hours. Your zone starts as your browser's zone when you signed up, and America/New_York if BlueBot couldn't tell. "Today" for the daily limits always uses your zone.

Smart quiet hours

If the people you text live in other zones, turn on smart_quiet_hours. BlueBot then reads your window in each person's own zone, from the area code of their number. Sam's account is in New York and most of his clients are in California. With smart quiet hours on, a text to a Los Angeles number waits until 8:00 AM Pacific, while a text to a Boston number goes at 8:00 AM Eastern:

curl -X PATCH "https://usebluebot.com/api/v1/settings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BLUEBOT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "smart_quiet_hours": true
  }'

Some area codes cover two zones, like Florida's panhandle (850) or western Kentucky (270). A text to one of those waits until it's outside quiet hours in both, so it never arrives early in one half or late in the other.

BlueBot uses your own zone for a person whose zone it can't tell from the number: a number outside the US and Canada, a toll-free number, an email address, and every group chat. Smart quiet hours only moves when a text goes; the daily limits still count by your own day.

If you'd rather keep one window for everyone, leave it off and choose a window that's quiet for all of them. With his account in New York and clients in California, Sam would end quiet hours at 11:00, which is 8:00 AM Pacific.

Change them

Send only what changes. To start quiet hours at 8:30 PM and end them at 9:00 AM:

curl -X PATCH "https://usebluebot.com/api/v1/settings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BLUEBOT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "quiet_hours": {
      "start": "20:30",
      "end": "09:00"
    }
  }'

The change applies at once. Texts that were waiting get a new hold.until, and texts outside the new window go on the Mac's next check-in. In the dashboard it's Settings → Sending rules.

Turn them off

curl -X PATCH "https://usebluebot.com/api/v1/settings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BLUEBOT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "quiet_hours": {
      "enabled": false
    }
  }'

Texts then go at any hour, and the settings answer with this warning: "Quiet hours are off, so texts can go at night. Several states limit when marketing texts may be sent." Turn them off only when every text you send is one the person asked for at that moment, such as a code or an answer to their own text, and even then think about who's asleep.

What quiet hours don't cover

• Texts you type yourself. A text you send by hand in Messages goes when you send it. Quiet hours only hold the texts BlueBot sends.
• Other holds come first. BlueBot shows one hold at a time. A paused account or a Mac that's away shows paused or device_offline overnight, and quiet_hours only once those clear. Holds
• Expiry keeps running. A text with an expires_at an hour away, sent at 10:00 PM, expires before 8:00 AM and never goes. Give night-time texts an expiry that reaches past the morning, or leave it at the 24-hour default.