How to text yourself on iPhone And what to do when the notes pile up.

Texting yourself works, and a lot of people use it as a notes inbox. Here are the steps in Messages, WhatsApp and email, and what to do when the thread fills up.

Jacky Fakkeldij Building Driftto, on his own · Updated 23 October 2026

I build Driftto, an iPhone app for sending a thought straight to Reminders, Notion, Todoist or an email address. Many people tell me they text themselves notes instead, so I looked at how that works, and where it stops working.

In October 2026 I went through Apple's iPhone guide and support pages, Gmail Help and WhatsApp's Help Center. What an app does comes from those pages. Where they don't say, I say so.

The short answer

Open Messages, tap Compose, and type your own phone number or Apple Account in the To field, then write the note and send it. WhatsApp has a built-in Message Yourself chat, and you can also email your own address. Pick the one you open most.

Text yourself in Messages

Apple's guide on starting a conversation doesn't mention yourself. It describes the To field for recipients, and yourself is just a recipient. These are Apple's steps with your own details in the To field.

1. 01

   Open Messages

   Go to the Messages app on your iPhone.

2. 02

   Tap Compose

   In the conversation list, tap the Compose button at the bottom of the screen.

3. 03

   Enter your own details

   Tap the To field. Apple says to enter the phone number, contact name or Apple Account of the recipient. Enter your own phone number or your Apple Account.

4. 04

   Write the note

   Tap the text field above the keyboard and type. You can also tap the microphone to dictate text in the language of your keyboard.

5. 05

   Send it

   Tap the Send button. If the message can't be sent, an alert appears, and you tap it to try again.

Next time, open the same conversation from the list instead of starting a new one. If the Send arrow is blue, the message went out over iMessage. Apple says that when a message can be sent using iMessage, it shows in a blue bubble.

One setting decides which of your details starts new conversations. In Settings, tap Apps, then Messages, then Send & Receive, and look under Start New Conversations From. Apple says that a conversation you started from your email address stays on it. To use your phone number, you start a new conversation. So pick the one you want before you start, or you may end up with two threads with yourself.

What to expect on other devices

Apple says that with iCloud for Messages, your messages stay up to date on every device that is set up for it, including iPhone, iPad and Mac, and that each device has to be signed in to the same Apple Account. A message you send, receive or delete on one device shows the change on the others.

What Apple's pages don't say is how a conversation with yourself looks on an iPad or a Mac, or where it sits in the list there. I found nothing on it, so I won't guess. Send one note and look on each device before you rely on it.

Message yourself on WhatsApp

WhatsApp has this built in, under the name Message Yourself. Its Help Center says you can send messages to yourself to keep track of notes and messages, and that these chats work and look like regular chats.

1. 01

   Start the chat

   From the Chats tab, tap the new chat button.

2. 02

   Pick yourself

   Search for or select your name or phone number, then tap it to create the chat.

3. 03

   Pin it

   WhatsApp suggests pinning the chat to the top of your chats list so you can find it fast.

You can also forward a message from another chat to yourself: touch and hold it, tap Forward, and select yourself. WhatsApp's page says messages to yourself are end-to-end encrypted. You can't make audio or video calls, mute notifications, block or report yourself, or see last seen and online in this chat.

Or email yourself

Yes, you can email yourself. It takes the same steps as any email, and it suits a note that you want to find in a search later, or one that is longer than a text.

• Mail on iPhone

  Open Mail, tap Compose, tap the To field and enter your own address, then type the message and tap Send.

• Gmail on iPhone

  Open the Gmail app, tap Compose at the bottom right, add your own address in the To field, add a subject, write the message, then tap Send at the top of the page.

• A copy of everything you send

  Apple's guide has a setting for this: in Settings, tap Apps, then Mail, and turn on Always Bcc Myself, below Composing. Mail then sends you a copy of each message you write.

If the note doesn't show in your inbox, look in Sent and in Spam first. The Gmail help pages I read say nothing about mail to your own address skipping the inbox, so I can't tell you that it does.

If the note is meant for Notion, mailing yourself will not get it there: Notion has no email address of its own. Email to Notion lists the routes that still work.

When the thread turns into a pile

The habit works because it is fast. You are already in the app, the field is open, and nobody sees it. The cost shows up a few weeks later. A thread is a stream: the newest note sits at the bottom, and an old one scrolls away. Nothing in it says what is open, what is done and what has a date.

Three signs the thread has become a pile: you scroll up to find one note and read twenty others on the way, you have texted yourself the same thing twice, and a note that was a task three weeks ago is still sitting there, on no list. The notes were not wrong. They just never left the thread.

What I'd do about the pile

Keep the habit, and add one step: a short sweep on a fixed day. Scroll the thread from the top and, for each note, do one of three things.

• It is a task

  Copy it into the list where you do your work, with a date if it has one, and delete it from the thread.

• It is a reference

  Move it to a notes app where you can search it, such as a Notion page or Apple Notes.

• It no longer matters

  Delete it. Most notes land here, and that is fine.

If the sweep never happens, the cheaper fix is to skip the thread for tasks and write them where they belong at the start. The best brain dump apps compares the ways to do that, with what each one costs and where each one fails.

Where Driftto fits

Driftto skips the thread. It opens to a capture field with the keyboard already up. You type or speak, then tap where the note goes, and it lands there as a new item. It is a paid iPhone app: free to download, with a free week on the yearly plan. It also only writes new items, so it won't tidy a thread you already have.

In Apple Reminders the whole note becomes the reminder's title, in the list you pick, with an optional due date and time. In Notion it becomes a page title in the database you pick, and in Todoist it becomes a task name in the project you pick. You can also set an email address, which you confirm with a six-digit code. Then the note goes there as an email with the subject "New capture from Driftto", which you can filter.

If your texts to yourself are mostly tasks, this saves the sweep. If they are loose thoughts that you want to keep next to the people you talk to, a thread may suit you better. There is also "Hey Siri, new capture in Driftto", which sends to the one destination you pick for Siri in Account.

Questions

Driftto is in the App Store now. The yearly plan starts with a free week.