When you’re stuck in a meeting or conference, and for some reason it seems to be dragging out, that feeling of agitation always seems amplified by seeing your unread messages build up minute by minute, and in turn, the senders are likely to feel a sense of agitation. This vicious cycle of agitation needn’t occur – particularly not in this Digital Age – and although Apple doesn’t offer an auto-reply feature at stock level, the jailbreak scene has come up with yet another gem to deal with these cumbersome situations.
It goes by the name of AutoResponder 2 (iOS 6+), and as well as being successor to the original AutoResponder, crams in a whole bunch of new and exciting features. Its intention is simple: to allow you to discreetly and effectively ensure anybody who messages you at times when you’re unable to respond are made aware that you’ll do your best to get back to them as soon as you can.
As well as being compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, it can use both your SMS or iMessage networks. You can tailor your responses for different occasions, and you can also add and remove contacts from the whitelist, ensuring those in receipt of an automated recipient were intended to.
The fact it works with all iDevices on iOS 6 or higher is certainly impressive, although I cannot help but feel this is only really useful for those on the iPhone. If the vast majority of your important contacts are running iOS (and thus, iMessage), then it is great, but with many folk on Android, BlackBerry and others, you’ll perhaps be better off using WhatsApp and setting "Busy" as your status.
Also, don’t use this tweak if your plan doesn’t offer a substantial amount of SMS messages, since these automated responses can quickly build up without you consciously noticing.
Notwithstanding those above issues, it’s still a great little tweak, and can be had over at the BigBoss repository for the introductory price of $1.50. After the initial period is up, you will have to pay $3 full price for the luxury of automated responses, so get it while it’s cheap!
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