Bring organization to your SMS & iMessage conversations with Message Groups [jailbreak]

Message Groups messages example

Message Groups is a new jailbreak tweak that aims to give you more organization in your Messages app, especially if you’re like the developer and have many conversations going on at once, as shown above.

With this tweak, you can add and manage your own custom groups in the Messages app, making it easy to filter through certain contacts or conversations, and as a result, making it quicker and easier to text in general.

In this review, we’ll talk about Message Groups and how it can help you.

Message Groups: group your texts by person or conversation

Because the Messages app can become a busy place, Message Groups aims to help you organize your conversations in a more readable manner. It’ll let you add and manage custom groups in the Messages app that will include or exclude either certain people, or certain conversations between you and another person.

For example, in the screenshot below, I’ve made a group called iDB, and I’ve added only myself and Sebastien into this group. Now, when I open this group, only conversations between myself and Sebastien will appear in the message thread view.

Message Groups Messages App UI

You can tap on the + button at any time to create new groups, or you can tap on the two heads in the top right of the interface to manage your existing Message Groups.

When you go into a group to modify its parameters, you will see an interface similar to this one:

Messages Groups Manage a Group

Within this interface, you can tweak all of the following things:

  • Give the group a title of your choice
  • Enable or disable the group for use
  • Hide or show conversations added to custom groups in default groups
  • Choose the contacts you want to appear in this group
  • Choose the individual conversations you want to appear in this group

Another cool feature of your groups is that they can be password protected. On devices with Touch ID on them, you can use the feature to authenticate yourself rather than enter a password, and this prevents your groups from being deleted or modified without your permission.

After creating the iDB group as I did above, I can also make a group for my close friends only, and another for my acquaintances.

If I want, I can even sort by conversation rather than person, which would be useful for anyone who does a lot of Craigslisting and wants to make a group specifically for conversations with strangers to conduct business so they remain separate from the rest of your messages.

The preferences pane

Message Groups adds a preferences pane to the Settings app where you’ll find a few options to configure to your liking:

Messages Groups Preferences Pane

Here, you can do things like:

  • Enable or disable the tweak on demand
  • Sort groups either by creation date or title name
  • Sort by order of ascending or descending
  • Manage your license information

Yes… we said license information. It’s worth noting that Message Groups is a free download from Cydia, but you’ll be required to purchase a license for the tweak for $1.49 after downloading it. This license is then assigned to your email and you can sign in and use your activation code from the Miscellaneous cell.

My thoughts on Message Groups

I personally like the idea of being able to make my own custom groups right from the Messages app and filter my conversations on demand. This tweak has a lot of potential to make using the Messages app feel a lot more organized, and the added protection by passcode or Touch ID helps ensure security of your groups.

On the other hand, I’m not really a fan of the rounded corners added to the Messages app after the installation, and I really don’t like third-party licensing systems as much as I like just being able to purchase the tweak directly through Cydia like other tweaks.

Nevertheless, if your Messages app is a mess, this is a jailbreak tweak that could potentially help keep you more organized.

Wrapping up

Message Groups, which can be activated for $1.49 after downloading the package for free from Cydia’s BigBoss repository, provides jailbreakers with a number of new conversation grouping options and can help keep even the untidiest texter in order.

What are your thoughts on being able to make custom Messages app groups at this micro-level of management? Share below!