Messaging

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

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 12, 2016

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.

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iOS 10 tidbit: managing read receipts on a per-conversation basis

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 4, 2025

iOS 10 has a new hidden switch, called Emergency Bypass, which permits you to override your global Do Not Disturb setting on a per-contact basis. It's especially handy for those times when you wanna enable Messages notifications for a contact that isn't in your Favorites, even if Do Not Disturb is on.

A similar new feature in iOS 10's Messages app makes it easy to enable or disable read receipts, which tell the other person when you've read an incoming text, on a per-conversation basis.

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Facebook launches new Home tab in Messenger

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 16, 2016

Facebook is trying to “reinvent the inbox” with Home, a new tab in the mobile Messenger app designed to make it easier to start conversations with the service's more than 900 million unique mostly users. David Marcus, Facebook's Messenger boss, said on Thursday that with the new Home tab his company is aiming to make Messenger simpler to use by presenting more relevant information.

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Viber gains iCloud backup, support for sending money, animated GIFs and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 6, 2016

Messaging service Viber this morning pushed a new update to its App Store app, adding several new long overdue features. For starters, iPhone users can now back up and restore their chat history through iCloud, making keeping their conversations after an iOS restore possible.

The application now has a brand new native watchOS 2 app for your wrist with canned responses on your Apple Watch. Other new features in this edition of Viber include support for sending and receiving animated GIF images, sending money from within the app and low-rate Viber Out calling plans via a redesigned screen.

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Google would love to work with Apple on making messaging more interoperable

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 2, 2016

Google CEO Sundar Pichai sat down for an interview with technology columnist Walt Mossberg at Code Conference yesterday. Fresh off Google's annual developer conference, which was big on artificial intelligence, the executive discussed a range of topics from Android to competition to digital assistants to artificial intelligence and beyond.

Pichai also expressed hope that big technology companies can work together on making their proprietary messaging services more interoperable.

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Facebook Messenger said to be rolling out opt-in encryption in the coming months

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 1, 2016

After WhatsApp and Viber both introduced end-to-end encryption last month, Facebook Messenger will become the next major messaging app to roll out this essential security feature, reports The Guardian.

Although end-to-end encryption on Messenger will be framed as an optional feature that users will need to manually enable, it will ensure that the contents of communications are hidden from eavesdroppers and that the identities of the participants are concealed.

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WhatsApp launches desktop app for Mac

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 17, 2018

WhatsApp on Tuesday launched a native desktop app for Mac and Windows computers. The Facebook-owned messaging service says the app provides a "new way to stay in touch anytime and anywhere - whether on your phone or computer at home or work."

To download the new desktop version of WhatsApp, visit whatsapp.com/download from your desktop browser. Then, open the app and scan the QR code using the WhatsApp app on your smartphone (be sure to look for WhatsApp Web menu under Settings).

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Facebook launching group audio calling on Messenger with support for up to 50 participants

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 21, 2016

A year after it rolled out the ability to place and receive VoIP audio calls on Messenger, Facebook is now introducing a new VoIP calling feature with support for up to fifty people on a single group call. Group calling currently supports standard VoIP audio calls, but Facebook did tell TechCrunch that “group video calling is definitely a use case that a lot of our people might be interested in at some point”.

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Safari to gain support for audio/video chats via WebRTC standard without needing a plugin

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 14, 2016

Apple is hard at work on adding support to its Safari browser for cross-platform audio/video communications capability that won't require any special plug-in, enterprise computing blog No Jitter learned yesterday.

The Cupertino firm's reportedly decided to incorporate support for the open-source WebRTC project, a real-time video and audio standard originally created by Google.

Microsoft's Edge and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers have adopted this technology recently, which lets web developers create messaging applications that run in a browser and offer two-way audio/video communications capability without a plug-in.

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You can now attach Microsoft Office documents to your WhatsApp chats

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 13, 2016

After enabling complete end-to-end encryption for chats and adding support for sending and receiving PDFs and basic text styling, WhatsApp for iPhone in its most recent update brings the ability to attach Microsoft Office documents to your instant exchanges with friends on the service.

Although not mentioned in the official release notes accompanying the 59.1-megabyte app, the change was spotted this morning by the Italian blog iSpazio. This is a useful new feature for users that removes the need to convert Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to the PDF format before attaching them to their WhatsApp conversations.

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