Easily gather feedback and opinions from friends and family using the iMessage polls feature in the Apple Messages app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Whether you’re asking your family what to order for dinner or trying to find the best date for a meetup with friends, the polls feature in the Messages app makes it easy to see which option works for everyone.
Make sure your and your recipient’s devices are running the latest version of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Create a poll
1) Open the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac and go to an individual or group conversation.
2) Tap the plus button (+)Â and select Polls.
3) Enter your first choice or poll option. As you type, a new choice field appears automatically underneath it. Repeat this to add up to 12 choices in a single poll.
4) With choices done, use the comment box to add a question, which will appear under the poll options. If you like, you can also send the question first, then create a poll so the choices appear under the question.
5) Lastly, tap the arrow button to send your poll. The recipient or group members can now vote to share their opinions.
Vote
Tap the desired option in a poll to cast your vote. If you change your mind, tap the marked choice to unvote. You can also pick more than one choice, since iOS doesn’t let the poll creator restrict voting to one answer.
Note that you can’t create a poll in the Messages app on Apple Watch, but you can vote in one by tapping the choices on the screen.
Add choices to your poll later
Tap Add Choice under a poll and type in additional options. If the options shown in a poll aren’t enough for the receiver, they can also tap Add Choice and add their own.
The choice they (non-poll creator) add becomes a part of the original poll, nearly indistinguishable from the choices you (i.e., the original poll creator) added during poll creation. After someone adds choices to your poll, the poll shifts from the right side of your device screen to the left, and you’ll see a tiny label with that person’s name, but it’s not very helpful. Other participants have no way of knowing who added a new option to the poll. Overall, it’s a messy and idiotic implementation that makes a mockery of the polls feature. Apps like WhatsApp don’t have such drawbacks in their poll feature.
Note that Add Choice is only visible if the poll currently has fewer than 12 choices.
View poll results
Both the poll creator and recipients can view the results. Touch and hold the poll, then select Poll Details from the menu to see who voted, their choices, and even group chat members who haven’t voted yet.
Delete your poll
There is no way to delete the poll for everyone unless you act within 2 minutes of sending it and use the Undo Send option.
However, if you want to delete the poll from your devices, simply delete it like any other message: touch and hold the poll, tap More, then tap the trash icon and confirm.
Polls lack basic features! It’s stupid…
Apple’s Messages app poll implementation is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen! It feels like a 5-year-old gave a prompt to the free version of an AI tool, and Apple shipped whatever the first build was.
- You can’t add a question to the poll. You must send a separate message either before creating the poll or add a comment that appears as a separate text under the poll. This is lousy!
- Recipients can add choices, and you, the poll creator, have no option to block this. On top of that, the Poll Details page doesn’t clearly show who added the extra choices, which is confusing.
- The poll creator can’t restrict people to choosing just one option or block them from changing their vote.
- After you create a poll, the conversation screen seems to lag, auto-scroll unnecessarily, and the poll even disappears briefly. Deleting the poll resolves these unusual issues.
- Finally, the design, or lack thereof, could be confusing. There is no border around the poll to separate it from other text. All the options appear as horizontal bars on their own, without grouping. As votes come in, the size of the choices changes, and some with no votes get truncated, appearing strange. Compare this to WhatsApp (pictured below), and you’ll see the difference.
Hopefully, Apple will address at least some of these concerns in future iOS updates.
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