Messages

iOS 10 preview: Messages does stickers, apps, animations & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 20, 2016

Apple's iMessage system has officially become a chat platform in its own right as Messages in iOS 10 now supports third-party apps, stickers and more. In addition, Messages on iOS 10 brings out a number of useful improvements, including animated chat bubbles and full-screen motion backgrounds.

But we're just getting started: Messages on iOS 10 supports inline media previews, sports a redesigned built-in camera, provides downloadable stickers and apps, includes handwriting recognition, Digital Touch for your media and more.

Here's our walkthrough showing off every new feature in iOS 10 Messages.

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Watch cool new iOS 10 Messages features in a video Apple ran during WWDC keynote

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 13, 2016

A supercharged Messages is definitely my killer app in iOS 10. Not only does it catch up to other messaging apps with perks like downloadable stickers, it actually leapfrogs them with cool new stuff such as full screen animations, chat bubbles that animate in specific ways to better convey your emotions, support for sketching and the Apple Watch's Digital Touch feature and what not.

In fact, Messages in iOS 10 is so jam-packed with improvements that Apple ran a cool video during the keynote showing them off.

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Messages app updated in iOS 10 with new emoji features, Bubble effects and more

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Also getting a big update in iOS 10 is the Messages app. New features include inline rich links, which open YouTube videos, images and other types of media—videos now play right within the app!—a built-in Camera viewfinder, and some great emoji improvements.

These improvements include 3x bigger emoji images within your messages, so you can see the icons in greater detail, and predictive emoji. Apple calls this "emojifiable." So the Messages app in iOS 10 can essentially guess emoji images for the words you tap on.

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New jailbreak tweak enables sending text messages via Pebble

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 16, 2018

Those who are using a Pebble smartwatch rather than Apple's own Apple Watch as an accessory for their iPhone are limited in features, but with a new jailbreak tweak dubbed TextSender for Pebble, there is at least some hope for extended functionality.

TextSender for Pebble will, as the name implies, allow those with a Pebble smartwatch to send text messages from their watch via their iPhone.

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Kairos lets you schedule text messages to be sent later [jailbreak]

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 18, 2016

Text message scheduling is a useful feature that I'm surprised Apple hasn't already built into iOS' Messages app as a stock feature. After all, sometimes you want to wish someone a Happy Birthday or wish them a great holiday and you may remember before the fact, but you forget when the time actually comes.

Kairos is a new jailbreak tweak that streamlines scheduling out text messages in iOS, and we'll show you how it works in this review.

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How and why to report spammy iMessages to Apple

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 16, 2016

Sometimes your contact information ends up where you don't want it, and you end up with annoying spam iMessages from people, companies, or bots that try to scam you or steal personal information.

Fortunately, Apple's iMessage service comes with an abuse report feature that you can use to report senders who are misusing the iMessage platform and making it a less enjoyable thing to use.

In this piece, we'll talk about how and why you should be reporting iMessages that seem spammy.

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

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 14, 2016

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.

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How to convert text into a spoken iTunes track on Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 3, 2019

Whenever you want to save a block of important text to your Mac, you probably copy and paste it into the Notes app or into a text editor to save it as a text document. But, did you know you could save any body of text on your Mac as a spoken iTunes track instead?

In this tutorial, you will learn how to convert any highlighted body of text into a spoken iTunes audio track.

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Watch Apple’s cool new environment video: it’s all about iMessage

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 22, 2016

Apple yesterday published a cool new video on its YouTube channel that does a very good job explaining to the general public, in layman's terms, its renewable energy strides.

The 45-second clip is all about iMessage, Apple's own messaging service that's built right into the stock Messages application on iOS and OS X.

With an average of tens of billions of iMessages hitting Apple's data centers on any given day, the Cupertino firm wanted to make it clear that the impact on our environment is negligible because Apple's servers run on 100 percent renewable energy.

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Bookmark specific SMS or iMessage messages with SmsSave

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 11, 2016

Every so often you send or receive a cherishable or important message in the Messages app on your iPhone, whether by SMS or iMessage. In some cases, it would be really nice if iOS offered a way for you to boak ark those messages so you could look back on them more easily later on.

A new free jailbreak tweak called SmsSave is available in Cydia and gives you the power to bookmark messages right inside of the Messages app on your iOS device. We're going to show you in this review how it's used and talk about why it's going to be helpful.

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