Product guide # Quiet hours Automations, scheduled messages and announcements reach each person only at a decent hour **in that person’s own time**: 8 AM to 9 PM, or tighter where their state requires it. A message that comes due at night waits for their morning. It is on by default, and you can turn it off for any one of them. 8 AM to 9 PM, their time The federal rule for marketing calls and texts (the TCPA, 47 CFR 64.1200(c)(1)). Their time, not yours: 8 AM in New York is 5 AM in Los Angeles. Their time comes from their number The area code gives their state and time zone. A state with stricter hours gets its own: Florida ends at 8 PM, Texas starts at 9 AM. Replies still go An automation answering somebody who wrote to you in the last hour, a keyword reply at 10:30 PM say, goes straight away. They asked for it then. The flow's own sending hours, if you set any, still apply. On by default, off when you need it A scheduled message or an announcement can untick it; an automation can choose its own hours instead. Messages you send by hand, and sends through the messages API, are never held. ## What it applies to - **Automations.** Every message a flow sends, the first and each follow-up. A step due at night waits for the person’s morning, and an “Only if they have not replied” right before it is asked then, so a reply overnight still stops it. A flow can choose *My own hours* instead: one window, in one time zone, for everybody, used in place of quiet hours. Then following the law where each person is is yours to answer for. - **Scheduled messages.** A time you pick that is night where the recipient is goes at their morning instead. The list shows when it will really go, marked “their morning”; the time you chose is kept. - **Announcements.** Each person on the list is reached in their own daytime. People who are awake get it now, and the rest as their morning comes, so a list across the country arrives in waves and the announcement stays Sending until the last of them has had theirs. Not affected: a message you type in a conversation, a reply you send by hand, and `POST /v1/messages` from your own integration. Those are yours to time. ## How their time is worked out From the number alone. A US or Canadian area code gives a state or province and its time zone. An area code that covers two zones, like 850 in the Florida panhandle, keeps to the hours that are open in both. Any other country’s number is read by its country code, and the regional digits where a country has several zones. Somebody we cannot place — an iMessage email address, or an area code too new to know — is kept to the hours open across the continental US: 8 AM Pacific to 9 PM Eastern. Daylight saving follows each zone, so 8 AM is 8 AM on both sides of a clock change. An area code says where a number was issued, not where its owner is tonight. Somebody who moved and kept their number is messaged by the hours of where it came from. It is the best signal a number carries, and the one the state laws themselves presume. ## States with stricter hours Everywhere else it is 8 AM to 9 PM every day. Where these apply, both the state’s hours and the federal ones do, so this is already the narrower of the two. A holiday is a federal legal holiday or one the state names itself. | State | Hours | Also | | --- | --- | --- | | Alabama | 8 AM–8 PM | Never Sunday or a holiday | | Connecticut | 9 AM–8 PM | | | Florida | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Kentucky | 10 AM–9 PM | | | Louisiana | 8 AM–8 PM | Never Sunday or a holiday, including Mardi Gras and Good Friday | | Maryland | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Massachusetts | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Michigan | 9 AM–9 PM | | | Minnesota | 9 AM–9 PM | | | Mississippi | 8 AM–8 PM Central Standard Time | So 9 AM–8 PM while clocks are forward. Never Sunday or a holiday | | Nevada | 9 AM–8 PM | | | New Mexico | 9 AM–9 PM | | | Oklahoma | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Oregon | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Pennsylvania | 9 AM–7 PM | Never Sunday or a holiday (Act 47 of 2026, from October 18, 2026) | | Puerto Rico | 9 AM–9 PM | | | Rhode Island | 9 AM–6 PM weekdays, 10 AM–5 PM Saturday | Never Sunday or a holiday | | South Dakota | 9 AM–9 PM | Never Sunday | | Texas | 9 AM–9 PM | Noon–9 PM on Sunday | | Utah | 8 AM–9 PM | Never Sunday or a holiday, including Pioneer Day | | Washington | 8 AM–8 PM | | | Wyoming | 8 AM–8 PM | | We apply every one of these to every message, even where it is unsettled whether a state’s rule reaches texts, or whether a customer’s consent lifts it. Holding a message until 9 AM costs an hour; the other mistake can cost a lawsuit. ## Turning it off Untick **Quiet hours** on a scheduled message or an announcement. On an automation, choose **My own hours** under When it sends and set the hours it may send instead. Some messages belong outside quiet hours: an alert to your own on-call engineer, a reminder somebody asked to get at 6 AM, a message to a business line. Leaving them is your decision about that message, and you are responsible for following the texting laws where each person is. Everything else keeps its quiet hours. Through the API, send `"quiet_hours": false` when you create a scheduled message or an announcement; absent means on. An automation with `send_hours` keeps to those instead of quiet hours. A scheduled message’s response carries `goes_at`, when it will really go. ## What quiet hours do not do - They do not replace consent. Quiet hours decide *when*; whether you may message somebody at all is still yours to have, and opt-outs are honoured whatever the hour. - They cannot see where somebody actually is. A traveller is messaged by their number’s hours, not the city they are in. - A message handed to the phone a moment before the window closes can arrive a moment after it. Nothing is handed over once it has closed: one still waiting on a busy or offline line then is cancelled (the conversation shows it as “Cancelled before it was sent”) and goes again, by itself, in their morning. - This page is how the product behaves, not legal advice. [Next Opt-outs and suppression Who will not be messaged at all, whatever the hour, and how that is decided.](https://missblue.dev/docs/opt-outs)