Send messages with lasers or transform yourself into a Memoji.
Us iPhone users are snobs when it comes to messaging platforms. As much as you might deny it, you feel some sense of disappointment whenever you go to send someone a text and it appears green. We’re plain and simply all team blue.
There’s something so soothing about seeing blue text bubbles backwards and forwards and no offence to Android users but once iMessage has its claws in you, there’s no turning back.
Everything seems better in iMessage: group chats, sending photos and videos and honestly everything else in between.
We’re at iOS 14.5 currently but it was iOS 14 that brought us iMessage tips and tricks that we never knew we needed. Here are the top 10 features of iMessage that you need to be taking advantage of – in no particular order of course.
1) Who comes out on top?
It seems that people favour sending messages over phone calls. It’s quicker, less awkward and doesn’t warrant half as much energy.
But with all the messages flying around, it’s vital you make sure the important ones don’t get lost along the way.
With iMessage you can pin your most important conversations to the top of your app so that you can easily access them whenever you need.
Who you choose to pin is completely up to you. Whether it’s your accountant or a big group chat with all your friends in, it doesn’t matter.
1) Open up the iMessage app and tap Edit in the top left corner.
2) Select Edit Pins.
3) A selection of yellow pins will appear on the right hand side of each conversation. Select which you want to pin.
4) This conversation will appear at the top of your iMessage screen.
You’ll see a rounded profile with an avatar in it. If you’ve set a profile photo for that conversation, that photo will appear, otherwise you’ll see a little grey figure.
2) Ignore at your leisure.
As much as we all pretend that we’re polite all the time, the matter of fact is that sometimes we simply receive a message and don’t have the energy to respond there and then.
iMessage has a handy feature that takes care of this problem. It allows you to disable read receipts for everyone or individual conversations so that they won’t suspect a thing!
1) Head to Settings on your iPhone.
2) Tap on Messages.
3) Disable the Send Read Receipts option.
If you only want to disable it for certain people, this is done on the iMessage app itself.
1) Open up the conversation you want to disable them on.
2) Tap the profile photo at the top and then select info.
3) Tap on the toggle next to Send Read Receipts to deactivate it.
3) Read everything at once.
There’s nothing worse than a Home Screen that’s cluttered with notifications. It doesn’t sit right with us to have apps with messages oozing out of them, be that email accounts or socials but especially messages.
There’s a way you can mark all your messages as read in iMessage, so you don’t have to deal with the stress of looking at multiple notifications.
1) Open up the Messages app.
2) Tap on the three-dot menu in the upper right hand corner.
3) Tap on Select Messages and then select Read All in the bottom left corner.
This will mark all your unopened messages as read and will save you the time of sorting through them all.
4) How do you feel about that message?
The problem with texting is that sometimes it’s difficult to convey how you feel about what has been said. Introducing Expressions.
This is a handy little feature of iMessage that lets you emphasise exactly how you feel about an iMessage that you’ve received.
If you hold your finger down on the message, a list of little images will appear: an exclamation mark, a question mark, a thumbs up, a thumbs down, a ha-ha, and a heart.
If you select one of those, the person you’re messaging will receive a notification telling them how you reacted.
It’s great for how much you love or don’t love an iMessage as well as conveying just how funny you found that joke that someone sent or how much you agree with what they’ve said.
5) Memoji mayhem.
Memoji is where iMessage gets fun. You can send a whole bunch of little avatars with every iMessage you send.
There are tigers, skeletons, dinosaurs and so much more. Each one represents a different emotion be it happiness, sadness, anger, shock or love.
They’re another great way of showing how you feel through pictures rather than words – and they’re cute as hell.
To use them, open up the conversation you want to use them in and tap on the icon with three cartoon faces at the bottom of your screen.
You’ll see the full list of Memoji here as well as the option to create and customise your own Memoji too. Tap the + icon and then select Get Started. Transform yourself into a cartoon in a matter of minutes.
6) We all love special effects.
This is probably our favourite feature that iMessage offers and we’re certain that you’ll love it too. Send iMessages with a selection of full screen special effects.
Create your own laser display on both your screen and your recipients or dazzle them with a huge firework show.
You can enjoy this and so much more. Emphasise your iMessage and watch it appear all around your screen or send it with a beaming spotlight shining on it.
It’s not only screen effects that you can send, you can also add effects to each individual iMessage. Got a secret code you don’t want anyone to see? Send it with invisible ink and watch your iMessage appear hidden behind a flurry of stars.
Add a slam effect to your iMessage to show just that you mean business or a gentle effect if you want to appear less intense. This section of iMessage is super-fun to play around with and it’ll certainly make your conversations more fun.
7) Always keep your image quality.
Sending an image over iMessage is super convenient. It’s a lot faster than other apps and it has settings in place that ensure not one bit of quality is compromised in the send.
By default, iMessage will compress the quality of the images you’re sending. This is fine if you’re sending through a food menu or a photo of a piece of clothing for an opinion, but when you want to send a photo of the kids to your parents or a photo of the dogs to your partner, quality is important.
Maintaining this quality is easy.
1) Head to Settings.
2) Select Messages.
3) Scroll to the bottom and disable Low-Quality Image Mode.
Blurry images are a thing of the past people!
8) Raise and listen.
If you’re not on the audio message hype yet, you need to be. It’s the latest messaging trend and we’re not sure if it’s lazy texting or genius. It’s basically the process of people sending their messages as voice notes rather than words.
Raise to listen allows you to quickly listen and reply to these voice notes by raising your iPhone to your ear. You’ll need to be quick though, after you’ve pressed play once, the audio message will expire after two minutes.
Enabling raise to listen is easy:
1) Head to Settings.
2) Open the Messages tab.
3) Scroll down to the Audio Messages section.
4) Tap the toggle to enable Raise to Listen.
iMessage away.
iMessage is so much more than just staying in touch with your nearest and dearest. It has a whole bunch of features that make it not only more fun, but more practical too.
If you’re on the market for a new iPhone or just enjoyed this guide so much that you’re taking the leap from Android to Apple, we’ve got you covered.
We’ve got prices you won’t want to miss on the very best that Apple has to offer. Don’t miss out!
