# Text messages

Text alfred_ from your phone, no app needed. Save your number in Settings, send alfred_ a text, and that first text verifies the number. No code is sent.

Source: https://get-alfred.ai/docs/ways-to-use/text  
Updated: 2026-10-24

## Connect your phone

1. **Add your number**

   Open **Settings → Preferences** and add your mobile number.

2. **Text alfred_ from that phone**

   Any message works. Home shows the number to text.

3. **That's it**

   Your first text verifies the number. alfred_ doesn't send a code, and it can't text you until you've texted it first.

## What you can do by text

- **Email**: find, read, reply, draft, archive. See [Reply by text](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/email/reply-by-text).
- **Calendar**: what's on, schedule, move, find open time.
- **Tasks**: add, list, check off.
- **Your brief**: text "brief me" for a fresh one.
- **Settings**: "send my brief at 6", "turn on quiet hours".
- **Memory**: "remember that…"
- **Photos**: send a receipt, a screenshot or a business card and alfred_ reads it.

> *Example, by text. Names are made up.*
>
> **You:** Set up lunch with Mark next Wednesday at noon
> **alfred_:** You have a 12:00 call with Dana that day. Lunch at 1 instead, or move the call?
> **You:** 1 works
> **alfred_:** Lunch with Mark, Wed 1:00 PM, invite to <mark@northside.co>. Reply 1 to send the invite, 2 to change it, 3 to cancel.
> **You:** 1

## Confirming by text

Before alfred_ sends an email, invites people to a meeting, or cleans up mail by sender or search, it texts you what it's about to do and ends with "Reply 1 to … , 2 to change it, 3 to cancel."

| You reply | What happens |
| - | - |
| "1", 👍, "yes", "send it", "go ahead" or "do it" | It goes ahead. |
| "3", "no", "cancel", "stop" or "never mind" | It stops. |
| "2", or a change like "make it shorter" | It changes the draft and shows it again. |

Archiving, moving or deleting a few emails you name happens right away, and alfred_ tells you what it did. Text "undo" to put them back.

If alfred_ asked you a question ("30 or 60 minutes?"), your next text is taken as the answer. Text "never mind" to drop it.

## What alfred_ texts you

- Your [morning brief](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/routines/morning-brief).
- A reminder before each meeting (on by default, 15 minutes before), and a text when a task's reminder time comes.
- If you turn them on: a text when a meeting is moved or cancelled, and flight updates.
- Alerts from [email rules](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/email/rules) and results from [routines](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/routines).

## Stop or pause texts

- **Stop texts from alfred_**: turn off **Texts from alfred_** under **Settings → Notifications**. You can still text alfred_, and the web app, the iPhone app and email briefs keep working.
- **Stop texts at night**: set [quiet hours](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/preferences#quiet-hours). Texts wait until they end, except a flight update on the day you fly.
- **Stop one kind of text**: turn off that reminder under Settings → Notifications, or ask alfred_ to stop a rule ("stop texting me about Dana's emails").

## Privacy

alfred_ only sees what you text to alfred_, not your texts with other people, and it isn't part of group texts. Photos you send are read to answer you. Your conversation, what you ask it to remember, and a record of what it did for you are kept in your account. See [Privacy and your data](https://get-alfred.ai/docs/preferences/privacy).

Text "save yourself to my contacts" and alfred_ sends you a contact card.