Digital Touch

How to use Digital Touch in Messages for iPhone and iPad

Digital Touch debuted as a sort of gimmicky feature of the Apple Watch software. On iOS 10, Digital Touch has made its way into the stock Messages app, making it easy and to add various effects to photo or video attachments, send sketches, taps, kisses, heartbeats and more. In this step-by-step tutorial, you're going to learn how to express your feelings in style with the Digital Touch features on your iOS 10-enabled iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

How to send kisses, heartbeats, heartbreaks, taps, sketches, and fireballs in messages from your Apple Watch

Four Apple Watch mockups showing Digital Touch message effects like fireball, heartbeat, taps, and kiss

Digital Touch allows you to send all kinds of beautiful animations, such as heartbeats, broken hearts, kisses, fire, and animated sketches, just by using simple taps and gestures on the watch screen.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to send a Digital Touch effect in the Messages app on your Apple Watch. You're going to love it!

iOS 10 tidbit: sending fireballs via Digital Touch

The Digital Touch interface made its debut on the Apple Watch in April 2015. With iOS 10, Apple is bringing Digital Touch features to the Messages app and it does so much more than its wrist counterpart was capable of at launch.

With Digital Touch, you can doodle over live video, adorn your messages with animated kisses, digital taps and auto-dissapearing drawings and even send animated hearts and broken hearts to other people.

Today, we're taking a closer look at another nifty feature in iOS 10 Messages: the ability to express your angst or anger by shooting virtual fireballs at your recipient(s).

iOS 10 tidbit: sending broken hearts via iMessage

iOS 10's much-enhanced Messages app includes the Digital Touch interface that first appeared on the Apple Watch. With Digital Touch, users can create iMessages that contain doodles, digital taps, video with effects and more.

We recently explained how Digital Touch can be taken advantage of to send nicely animated hearts to your recipients. Here's another iOS 10 tidbit: Messages on iOS 10 also lets you shoot animated broken hearts to someone for those times you wish to convey more specific feelings.

iOS 10 tidbit: using Digital Touch in Messages to send kisses instead of hearts

Aside from a lot of other advances, iOS 10 turns the Messages app into a platform upon which developers can build downloadable stickers, full-screen animations and chat bubble effects. Messages in iOS 10 also supports Digital Touch, a feature that first debuted on the Apple Watch.

With the new Digital Touch interface in iOS 10 Messages, users can draw and sketch with their finger on photos and video, send hearts and create other digital effects on video. But as it turns out, users also have the option to send animated kisses instead of heart beats using a simple gesture.