How to set up auto-reply on WhatsApp (Android, 2026)

There are three ways to make WhatsApp answer for you, and they are genuinely different products rather than versions of one thing. Start with the free one: for a lot of businesses it is the whole answer, and you will know within a week whether it is enough.

Route 1: the built-in away message (free)

This needs the WhatsApp Business app rather than the standard one. Both are free and both can use the same number, though you can only have one of them signed in to it at a time.

1. Open WhatsApp Business.
2. Tap the menu, then Settings.
3. Tap Business tools.
4. Tap Away message.
5. Switch Send away message on.
6. Tap the message text to edit it. Write something specific: when you will reply, and what to do if it is urgent.
7. Under Schedule, choose one of: always send, custom schedule, or outside business hours. Custom schedule is the one most people want.
8. Under Recipients, choose everyone, or exclude your regulars.
9. Tap Save.

While you are there, set the greeting message too. It goes to someone writing to you for the first time, and it is the cheapest first impression available.

What you now have. One fixed message, sent outside your hours, to anyone who writes. It does not read the question and cannot answer it. Its limits are written up in what away messages cannot do.

Route 2: a keyword autoresponder

If you want a reply during the day, or different replies for different questions, the next step up is a rule-based app. The setup is broadly the same whichever one you choose.

1. Install it from Google Play.
2. Grant notification access when it asks. On Android this lives behind its own settings screen rather than a normal permission prompt, and the app will usually open it for you. The path is Settings, then Notifications, then Device and app notifications.
3. Choose which apps it may answer in.
4. Create your first rule: a trigger word, and the reply to send when a message contains it.
5. Add a fallback rule for messages that match nothing, or accept that those get no reply.
6. Test it from a second phone before trusting it with customers. Every one of these has a mode where it answers your own contacts in a way you did not expect.

What you now have. Fast answers to the questions you anticipated. Anything you did not anticipate matches the wrong rule or nothing at all. Budget for the upkeep: the rule list grows forever and is never finished.

Route 3: an app that reads the question

This is the newer category, and the setup differs in one important way: instead of writing rules, you teach it about your business once.

1. Install it from Google Play.
2. Sign in and answer the setup questions about what you sell and when you are open.
3. Grant notification access, the same permission as route 2 and by the same path.
4. Give it your business details. A price list as a PDF, a photo of a menu, a chat export, or text you paste in.
5. Approve what it learned from those. Anything it read wrong is easier to fix here than in front of a customer.
6. Choose which apps it may answer in.
7. Decide whether it sends by itself or leaves each reply for you to check. Know which one you have chosen before a customer writes.

What you now have. Replies to questions nobody wrote a rule for, quoting details you gave it once. What WhatsAssist does with those details is on the features page, and the plans are on the pricing page.

Which route do you actually need?

If your incoming messages are	Use
Mostly outside your hours, mostly “are you open”	The built-in away message
A handful of predictable questions, all day	A keyword autoresponder
Prices, stock, availability, things that change	An app that reads the question
Regulated, sensitive, or high value per message	Any of them, with sending switched off so you check each reply

The step everyone skips, and then blames the app for

On most Android phones, especially Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus, the system will kill a background app after a while and your replies simply stop. This is the single most common reason an auto-reply app “stops working” and it is not the app’s fault.

Two settings fix it, and their names vary by manufacturer:

• Allow autostart or Auto-launch for the app.
• Battery set to Unrestricted or No restrictions, not Optimised.

On Samsung, add the app to Never sleeping apps and turn off Put unused apps to sleep for it.

Do this at setup rather than after your first missed message.

After it is running

Watch one thing for the first week: the replies that went out to real customers. Whichever route you took, read a day’s worth. You will find one sentence you would have phrased differently, and fixing it at that point is cheap.

If replies stop, check in this order: notification access still granted, battery settings still as you set them, and then whatever allowance your plan has.

Writing the message itself

The setup is the easy part; the sentence is what customers judge. What follows holds whichever route you took.

Say when, not sorry. “We are away right now” tells the customer nothing they did not know. “We reply between 9 and 6, so you will hear from us first thing” tells them whether to wait or to go elsewhere, which is what they are deciding.

Give one escape hatch. A phone number for urgent things, or a line about what counts as urgent. It costs you nothing on most nights and saves the one night it matters.

Do not apologise twice. An away message that opens with an apology and closes with another reads as a form letter, which is exactly what it is, and the point is to not sound like one.

Name the thing you sell. “We reply from 9” is fine. “We reply from 9, and if you are asking about a delivery already out, call the shop” is better, because it sorts the inbox for you before you open it.

A test worth doing before you trust it

Whichever route you took, do this once from a second phone, ideally not your own number:

1. Send a message during your open hours. Check whether you get what you expected, which for the away message is nothing.
2. Send one outside your hours.
3. Send a question you never anticipated.
4. Send something that should not be answered automatically at all, like a complaint.
5. Leave the phone alone overnight and check in the morning that it still answers.

Step five is the one people skip, and it is the one that catches the battery optimiser eating your setup while you slept.

Related reading

Before you install anything, the two questions worth settling are whether an auto-reply gets your number banned and what these apps can read.