Last winter a friend who films local restaurant visits complained to me. Having to publish at a fixed hour every day was more annoying than the filming.
Kuaishou traffic depends quite a bit on when a video goes out. His accounts were spread across a few restaurants in different cities, and each piece had to go out before the matching meal rush. He set three alarms. When one went off he put down what he was doing, took out his phone, and posted one by one. Once a meal rush landed while he was talking with a client. He missed it, and that video’s views came in under half of the usual number.
He asked whether it could publish on a schedule. It can. Publishing is a repeated action. The steps are fixed, and it does not call for a decision in the moment.
Scheduled posting is two things, and the phone has to be online
First, turn publishing into a template you can run again: open Kuaishou, enter the publish screen, choose the video from the library, fill in the caption and topics, tap publish. Once the template exists, one tap runs the whole thing.
Then, at the set time, trigger that template on its own.
Get the flow working by hand before you add a schedule. A flow that does not run smoothly by hand, once it is on a schedule, often sits there until the next morning before you notice it failed, and you do not know which step it stuck on.
Install the workstation and the phone-side program from the install selection page. Check three things: the workstation home page opens, the target phone shows as online on the Devices page, and the conversation page can send that phone an instruction.
The device page has four actions: scan, add to the list, set an alias, and group. When several accounts are in different cities, an alias such as “Beijing food walk 1” is easier to find than a string of random device numbers.
An offline device can be viewed. It cannot run. At the moment a schedule fires, the phone has to be online.
Describe the publish flow in ordinary language
On the conversation page, start a new conversation, select the target phone, and describe the whole publish flow in ordinary words. The first time, switch to refinement mode and let it ask the details through, such as which spot in the library the video comes from, how topics are added, and whether the app should return to the home screen after posting.
A description you can copy as a start:
Open Kuaishou, tap the publish entry in the top right, choose the most recent video from the library, tap next, type the text I give you into the caption box, add the topic tags I give you, keep the default cover, and stop in front of the publish button without submitting.
Keep “do not submit yet”. The first time you run it, confirm an action you cannot take back, such as publishing, yourself. Once the flow is stable, remove that limit.
The description you arrive at can be saved on the Prompts page, and pulled up next time for the same kind of content.
Freeze it into a template, and get the video into the library
A conversation is for trying it. A workflow is for running it over a long stretch.
Once the publish flow has run cleanly for several days in a row, save it as a workflow. Lay it out on the canvas as one complete chain, and use three features:
| Feature | Where it is used |
|---|---|
| Validate | Check that step connections and parameters are complete, so it does not error halfway through a run |
| AI workflow assistance | Have it generate or revise steps, so you do not build from an empty canvas |
| Test run | Pick one phone and run it once, and confirm it before you use it for real |
Caption, topics, and cover index differ for every post. Leave them as parameters. Keep them out of the fixed template text. With parameters, one “Kuaishou publish” template covers the content for each account. You do not build a separate flow for every video.
Test run it after you finish configuring it. The test run is recorded in Execution History.
Before publishing, that video has to already be in the phone library. Three ways to get a file there:
File distribution. The workstation can push files in bulk into the device library or the file manager. With many devices this is the least work. On iPhone, turn on photo library permission first, or the file arrives and still cannot be saved into the library.
Let the script download it. Put the video at an address the phone can reach, and have one step of the flow trigger the download. Flexible, and slow. It suits topping up a few phones at short notice.
Cloud storage sync. This suits three to five devices. Once there are more, the sync state is harder to keep track of.
Add the schedule, and when nothing goes out, check in this order
Once the flow and the files are ready, set the rule on the Schedule page. Schedules come in two kinds. A workflow schedule runs a chosen template at the set time. A conversation schedule runs what the conversation says when the time comes. For publishing, where the steps are fixed, use a workflow schedule.
Spread publish times across accounts. Do not stack every account on the same minute. It looks more natural. If something goes wrong when they all go out together, you can also tell a problem on one device from a problem in the flow itself.
A schedule only saves the moment of pressing the button. The flow itself still has to be tuned.
Three conditions. Miss one and the task will not move. The workstation on the computer has to be open, because the scheduling runs on that machine. The target phone has to be online, or able to connect on its own when the time comes. For a phone on USB, the connection and the workstation both have to be in a normal state at that moment.
After the task runs, check the Execution History page. Each record shows the task source (conversation, schedule, or workflow test run), the status, the target device, and the error.
Check in this order:
- If the error says the device is offline, go back to the device page and confirm the phone, then look at the USB and WiFi settings on the matching install page.
- If it says automation environment, go back to the install page and check the phone-side program and the related permissions.
- If it says unauthorised or expired, open the workflow library and look at that template’s status.
- If image matching or OCR fails, add an image template for that button, and save the cropped screenshot and a short description into the library.
Work through that order and most problems can be located within three minutes.
He later turned the content for the three restaurants into three workflows, each with its own schedule, once around lunch, once around dinner, and once late at night, with the times a bit over ten minutes apart. The alarms could come off. When he was free he opened Execution History and looked. By his own count, about half an hour a day of being interrupted went away, and when the hour came he no longer had to put down what he was doing in order to post.
Connect one phone from the install selection page first, try the simplest publish flow, and add the schedule once it runs.
Frequently asked questions
- How does scheduled posting on Kuaishou actually work?
- In two parts. First you freeze the publish flow into a workflow template, then you use the schedule feature to trigger that template at a set time. Both the trigger and the run happen on your own computer, with no cloud service involved.
- The scheduled time passed and nothing ran. What do I check first?
- Three things in order: whether the workstation on your computer is running, since scheduling is local; whether the target phone shows as online; and whether the USB connection is working at that moment for phones that use a cable. Miss any one of the three and the task stays put.
- How should I space out multiple accounts?
- Spread them rather than stacking everything on the same minute. It looks more natural, and if something goes wrong when they all fire at once you cannot tell whether it was one device or the flow itself. Distribute the times across a window.
- The caption and cover change every time. Do I need one workflow per post?
- No. Leave the changing parts as workflow parameters, such as caption, topic tags and cover index, and pass them in per account at run time. One template then covers a whole batch of posts.
- What is the difference between scheduled and manual posting?
- The execution path is the same. The only difference is who pulls the trigger. Manual means you click, scheduled means the clock does. So a flow that works by hand will usually work on a schedule, and a flow that does not work by hand is not ready for a schedule.
- How do I know whether a scheduled run succeeded?
- Check Execution History. Every task records its source, whether it came from a conversation, a schedule or a workflow test run, along with status, target device and error message. Check scheduled runs every time at the beginning.
- How do video files get into the photo library of several phones?
- Three ways: push them in bulk from the workstation, have the flow trigger a download from a reachable address, or sync through cloud storage. For modest file sizes bulk push is the least effort. On iPhone you must grant photo library permission first, or the file arrives but cannot be saved.
- What is the most common cause of a failed post?
- By frequency: the device is offline, the cover or button cannot be recognised, or the wait was too short so the next step fired before the screen finished loading. The first two are visible in the error message in Execution History. The third needs a longer wait.
Stop waiting for the clock
Turn the publish flow into a template and let it run on time
Software is completely free and runs on your own computer.