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Save and reuse SMS drafts

A draft is a partially-composed send saved for later — recipient(s), body, schedule, assigned device, all preserved exactly as you left them. Drafts sync across your dashboard, Android app, and browser extension because they live in Firestore under your account, not in browser-local storage.

This is different from a template: a draft is one specific in-progress send (one recipient list, one specific message); a template is a reusable pattern ("Hi {{name}}, ...") you apply to many sends. Templates are covered in Use templates; this recipe is about drafts.

Prerequisites​

A signed-in account. No additional permissions needed — drafts are server-side state, not a device-level feature.

Auto-save​

The composer auto-saves your work every few seconds. The save indicator under the body field shows the current state: Editing, Saved a moment ago, or Save failed (on network errors). You don't need to do anything to keep your work; closing the browser tab and reopening it later restores the draft exactly as you left it.

Auto-save creates a sms_drafts document in Firestore with status: 'draft' and writes back on every meaningful change — debounced to once every two seconds to avoid hammering Firestore on every keystroke. The document is owned by your account and visible only to you.

Manual save with a name​

Auto-save uses a system-generated title ("Untitled draft 2026-05-11"). For drafts you want to find later by name, give the draft an explicit title:

  1. In the composer, click the Save with name button (or the pencil icon next to the auto-generated title).
  2. Type a name — "Q3 customer reminder", "Birthday wish for Mom", "Onboarding sequence step 2".
  3. Click Save. The named draft replaces the auto-saved entry in your drafts list.

Named drafts appear at the top of the Drafts list, sorted by updatedAt descending. Auto-saved untitled drafts appear below, also sorted by date. Untitled drafts older than 30 days are garbage-collected automatically; named drafts persist indefinitely.

Open a saved draft​

  1. Open smsapp.aoneahsan.com/drafts (or Drafts in the navigation).
  2. The list shows every saved draft with title, last-updated timestamp, recipient count, and a body preview.
  3. Click a row. The composer opens with everything restored — recipient(s), body, send mode, schedule, assigned device.
  4. Continue editing or click Send / Fire batch to dispatch.

Sending a draft converts it from status: 'draft' to status: 'sent' (or status: 'scheduled' for scheduled sends) and the draft disappears from the Drafts list — it now lives in the Jobs list instead.

Cross-device drafts​

Because drafts live in Firestore, the same draft is available wherever you sign in:

  • Web dashboard on your laptop → start composing
  • Android app on your phone → open Drafts, the partial send is there
  • Browser extension at your desk → same draft, same state

The live Firestore subscription means changes you make on one device propagate to the others within seconds. There's no "sync now" button — it's continuous.

If two devices edit the same draft simultaneously (rare but possible), last-write-wins. The draft's updatedAt timestamp arbitrates: whichever device's latest edit had the higher timestamp wins, the other device's pending change is overwritten. There's no merge UI, no conflict resolution — drafts are simple enough that the cost of conflict-handling outweighs the rare benefit.

Delete a draft​

Click a draft in the list, click Delete, confirm. Deletion is hard — the draft document is removed from Firestore immediately. If you delete a draft you didn't mean to, there's no built-in undo; you'll need to re-compose.

To clear all auto-saved untitled drafts at once, click Drafts → Clean up untitled in the header. This removes every draft with the system-generated title; named drafts are kept.

Promote a draft to a template​

Sometimes a draft you've been polishing turns out to be a pattern you'll reuse. From the open draft:

  1. Click the menu icon next to the title (three vertical dots).
  2. Choose Save as template.
  3. Give the template a name and optional tags.
  4. Click Save. The original draft remains in your Drafts list; the new template appears in your template library.

The reverse — converting a template to a draft — is automatic when you click Use template in the composer: the template body fills the draft and auto-save kicks in.

Common errors​

If a draft "disappears" after you closed the browser, you may have been signed in to a different Google account when you composed it. Drafts are per-account; sign in to the account you used and check Drafts again.

If auto-save shows Save failed repeatedly, the most common cause is a Firestore rules violation — for example, if your account is suspended for fair-use violations. Check the dashboard for any account-level notices; if you see none, sign out and back in to refresh the session.

If a cross-device draft shows different content on two devices, the live subscription may be stalled on one device. Pull-to-refresh the Android app, or refresh the browser tab on the web. The subscription will reattach and resync within seconds.

Where to go next​

For ad-hoc one-off drafts that you'll send manually, the composer's built-in flow is enough. For drafts that are part of a recurring pattern (the same "weekly reminder" template body), promote to a template and use Use templates. For drafts that should fire at a future time without manual intervention, Schedule a recurring SMS is the right place to look.