Waiting, and waiting for an action
Hold for an hour, hold until Tuesday morning, or hold until they click.
Most of what makes a flow feel considered is the pauses. There are three blocks for it, and they answer different questions.
Wait — hold for a length of time
The everyday one. Two days after the welcome email, send the next one. Set any duration up to a year.
Flows step forward every few minutes rather than to the second, so a wait means at least that long. Nothing goes early.
Wait until — hold for a time of day
Use this when the hour matters more than the interval. “Two days later” can land at 4am; “wait until 9am” doesn’t. You can also hold until a particular weekday, so a flow that starts on Saturday can wait for Monday morning.
It uses your account's time zone
Set it in Settings. The point of this block is landing at a civilised hour, so the wrong time zone doesn’t degrade it — it inverts it. Nine in the morning becomes the middle of the night.
Daylight saving is handled on the calendar rather than by counting hours, so “9am next Tuesday” stays 9am across a clock change.
Wait for an action — hold until they do something
This one waits on the recipient: did they open, or click? It has two exits, and both need wiring:
- They did — taken as soon as it happens.
- Time ran out — taken when your timeout elapses and they still haven’t.
That’s how a nudge works: send an email, wait up to three days for a click, and send a different follow-up to the people who didn’t.
Prefer clicks to opens
Apple Mail opens messages on the recipient’s behalf, so an open is weak evidence anyone read anything. Branching on opened will route people down the “engaged” path who never saw your email. A click is a decision.
The difference that matters
Wait and Wait until hold for a length of time and then move on regardless. Nothing the recipient does changes them.
Wait for an action holds until one of two things happens, and which exit is taken depends entirely on the recipient. If you leave the “Time ran out” exit unwired, everyone who never clicks simply stops there.
Common issues
The email arrived later than the wait I set
Expected. Flows advance on a cycle of a few minutes, so short waits round up. A one-minute wait is not a one-minute timer.
Everyone stopped at a “Wait for an action” step
The “Time ran out” exit probably isn’t connected. People who never click have nowhere to go.
An email landed in the middle of the night
Use Wait until rather than Wait, and check the time zone in Settings.
Someone waited so long the email never arrived
An automation email that sits queued more than about ten days is dropped rather than sent, on the grounds that it has stopped being relevant. That usually means the flow was paused or the account was out of credit for a while.
FAQs
What's the longest I can wait?+
A year. Long enough for a renewal reminder, and short enough that the number still means something — a wait measured in years would be a step whose email can never actually arrive.
Can I change a wait while people are sitting in it?+
Yes. People already waiting are measured against the new setting when the flow next steps forward, so shortening a wait can release them sooner.
Do waits keep running if I pause the flow?+
No — pausing freezes everyone where they are and holds queued email. Resuming picks them up again. That’s what makes Pause safe to use when you spot a mistake.