What is Shared with You in iOS and iPadOS 15 and how to use it

There are a lot of features in iOS 15, such as Shared With You, that will improve your iMessage experience. Shared with You makes it easier for you to find web links, songs, photos, and more shared by your contacts via iMessage.

In this article, you’ll learn all about Shared with You, and how to use it on your iOS device.

Also see: 12 of the most exciting new features in iOS 15

Shared with You

The new Shared with You feature is primarily a Messages feature that makes it easier for you to find things shared with you in iMessages. For example, if someone shares a link or a photo in a message thread, you can easily access them via Shared with You. Normally, you’d have to search the thread to find the shared link or photo. In the Messages app, the shared links, photos, etc are saved separately in their corresponding applications.

You’ll also find this section in the respective app of the shared item. When someone shares a song with you in iMessage, the track will be shown under Shared with You in the Apple Music app. Similarly, shared photos will be shown in the Photos app, links in Safari, and so on. This will make it easy for you to find the shared content. The feature will be available across iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey. If you’d like to try out this feature, you can install the iOS 15 or iPadOS 15 beta on your device.

How to use Shared with You in iOS 15

Shared with You will be automatically enabled in iOS 15, but if it isn’t, then here’s how to enable it.

1) Launch the Settings app.

2) Scroll down to Messages.

Shared with You Messages iOS 15

3) Tap on Shared with You and turn Automatic Sharing on.

You can also select what content will be added to the Shared with You tab. Now, when someone shares content via iMessages, it’ll be added to a Shared with You section of a compatible app.

In the Photos app, go to the For You tab to see content shared in iMessages. The web links will be found in a separate section in the Safari app when you tap on the address bar. Songs and podcasts will show up in the Music app. Movies or TV shows available will appear in the Watch Now tab of the Apple TV app.

If you want to disable the feature, simply open the Shared with You option in Settings > Messages, and turn off Automatic Sharing. You may also hide content from a particular thread from appearing in the Shared with You section. To do this, press and hold on a thread and select Hide in Shared with You.

Wrapping up

As you can see, Shared with You is a nice little add-on to Messages that’ll vastly improve your messaging experience. Finding something someone shared in an iMessage thread can be cumbersome, but this new feature makes it super easy.