If co-workers (or friends) have come to expect an instant response when they send you a text, it can be useful to let them know when you’re in a meeting and unavailable for a while.

With just little bit of setup, you can create the SMS-equivalent of an email “out of office” message. Even better — you can build a text autorespond that automatically turns itself on whenever you’ve got a meeting on your calendar and switches off again when the event is done.

Bonus: You can also have it mute and unmute your phone, which is easy enough to do manually with a single tap when you walk into a meeting but also rather easy to forget.

Given the power and flexibility of the Android platform, I’m guessing there are several ways to create an SMS autorespond smart enough to read your calendar. (Alas, I don’t know any way to do this on iOS; let me know in the comments if there is.) I’ve settled on using two paid but highly affordable apps: Tasker ($2.99), which is powerful but somewhat complex to use, and Trigger ($2.99), which “triggers” actions depending on your surroundings; the Pro upgrade is needed to read calendar items.

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