Messages - page 5

When it comes to the Messages app, saving all your iMessages can be a good thing, letting you go back in time and see the delightful conversations you’ve had with your loved ones or even just checking to see where you’re supposed to meet up on Friday.

Of course, there might be a few of them, however, that you’re not super keen on saving. You may not want to get rid of an entire iMessage conversation thread, but there might be bits of it you’d rather forget.

Here’s how to get rid of parts of your iMessages while saving only your most treasured iMessages in OS X.

I’ve always loved being able to pick up an iMessage conversation that I started on my iPhone right on my Mac, and vice versa.

Unfortunately, I’ve been having an iMessage issue for the last few months — I can have conversations via Messages on my Mac and conversations via Messages on my iPhone, but my iMessages have stopped synchronizing across my devices.

One of the cooler features of having a pocket computer like the iPhone is being able to send a friend your location via Messages. Just a couple of taps on the iPhone and you can let anyone know where you’re at. It’s easy and super useful when you need to get a group together at a specific location.

The Apple Watch has a similar feature, which lets you do the very same thing without ever having to pull your iPhone out of your pocket.

Here’s how.

Sony’s PlayStation app for mobile has always been something of a disaster, with a poor user interface and painfully slow performance. That’s still true today — but now you don’t have to use it when all you want to do is message friends on the PlayStation Network.

In an effort to be a better messaging service, PlayStation Messages has gone solo. With the new PlayStation Messages app for Android and iOS, you can keep in touch with the rest of your clan without having to use the main PlayStation app at all.

If you’re trying your best to resist an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, do not walk into an Apple Store and try 3D Touch. Once you’ve had a taste of it, your smartphone simply won’t feel complete without it.

Here are four ways in which 3D Touch makes life a lot sweeter.

A new Apple patent could add a startling amount of functionality to your iMessages.

The tech would let you schedule pre-written texts and even send new ones automatically based on context the app draws from elsewhere on your iPhone.

The new messaging capabilities built into OS X Yosemite make your Mac even more useful for day-to-day communication. With this new set of features (part of Continuity), you can send SMS text messages and make phone calls from your Mac. Than can be super-helpful if you’re forgetful and leave your iPhone in another room.

It doesn’t take too long to set it all up; in fact, we’re going to show you how to set up Continuity in less than two and a half minutes! Check it all out in our video below.

Chris Toy was an Everquest geek in the early days, playing the addictive open-world video game somewhat obsessively.

It wasn’t slaying the monsters or leveling up that really motivated Toy, but the social aspects of the game.

“I was honestly pretty isolated,” the Hong Kong native told Cult of Mac by phone, “and talking to people via Everquest or World of Warcraft felt better than talking to real people.”

That’s when he realized that being able to text chat with other people wherever they were was the future of messaging, and perhaps even communication itself. Fast-forward to now, and Toy and a high-tech team living in San Francisco have created Bindle, a new group-messaging app designed to create this very same future.

Sometimes it’s important to let your buddies or loved ones know your location. Whether you need to share this information for safety reasons, or because you like them knowing where you are on our beautiful planet, iOS 8 and your iPhone make it super-simple.

There are two ways to let your friends know where you are at any given time with iOS 8. You can either send your location immediately, or you can share your location details with people over a prescribed amount of time.

Both options are right in an app you use all the time anyway: Messages. Here’s how.

In the past, using the Messages app on a Mac could be an irritating experience. And what if a friend dared to send a green-bubble text from an Android phone? When texting from your Mac, messaging those friends wasn’t possible until now.

In today’s Cult of Mac video, find out how to enable Text Message Forwarding between your iPhone and Mac. With iOS 8.1 and Yosemite installed, enjoying this seamless feature is just a few short taps and clicks away. Find out how to do it all in this speedy tutorial.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV to catch all our latest videos.

I’ve pretty much become a full-time texter these days, using Apple’s Messages app on my Mac and iPhone to send iMessages (to friends and contacts who use iOS or OS X) as well as regular text messages (to people outside the Apple ecosystem).

iOS 8 brings great new changes to the mobile version of the Messages app, some of which might not be immediately apparent. Here’s a look at the new features and how best to use them.

You don’t need a new iPhone to enjoy the awesome power of iOS 8. Loaded with new features and built-in apps, Apple’s latest mobile OS is its most powerful yet.

As intuitive as it is, there are plenty of tips and tricks that will help you truly get the most out of iOS 8 — even starting before you pull the trigger on the free upgrade. Just in case you don’t feel like reading all 182 pages of Apple’s official iOS 8 user guide, here’s a roundup of Cult of Mac’s most helpful iOS 8 tips and tricks. (We will update this post as we dive deeper into iOS 8 in coming weeks.)

I recently watched The Lady try to convince a friend of ours to download WhatsApp. The friend is moving to the United Kingdom, and we want to stay in touch. Our friend tried to say that email would do the job, but we all know that will never work.

Our friend doesn’t want WhatsApp (maybe because it’s owned by Facebook), and she doesn’t own an iPhone, so iMessage is out. Thankfully, there are plenty of free and good alternatives. Some are more secure, some have more features, and none of them is owned by Facebook.

Let’s take a look at what’s available and how these very different messaging apps compare on a number of key features.

The upcoming release of iOS 8 brings many new features that will dramatically improve everyday use of iPhones and iPads. While currently contacting your friends can be an annoyingly long process because you must open apps and search through contact after contact, a new feature in iOS 8 eliminates this common hassle.

In today’s video we show how iOS 8’s new quick contacts feature will make contacting your most recent friends much easier. After you update to iOS 8, simply double-click the home button to enjoy this new functionality.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

For at least the last year, rumor has had it that Facebook would soon require anyone who wished to message a friend through its official iPhone app to install a tertiary app, Facebook Messenger, instead.

Up until now, Facebook has held off on that threat. But as the social networking giant tries to spread its services across an entire ecosystem of apps, it looks like the House that Zuckerberg built might finally make good.

Are you bummed that don’t have anyone to sext with, or that the sexting has dried up in your relationship?

Don’t worry. Thanks to a new game, you can sext just as easily as picking up your iPhone and sending a text to a bot.

You can now share your crazy World Cup goal celebrations with your friends via Facebook Messenger for iPhone. A new update rolling out today introduces the ability to record and send 15-second video clips without ever having to leave the app.

So you get a seriously racy iMessage from someone incredibly inappropriate, and you want to send it along to one of your close confidants. What do you do?

It used to be that you’d tap the Edit button in Messages to be able to forward them.

In iOS 7, there is no Edit button. Nor can you swipe to the left, as that just brings up the timestamps.

Sometimes, you might have a certain someone who gets a little, shall we say, overzealous in trying to message you. Since your iPhone and Mac can both receive iMessages, you might get interrupted by the flurry of messages from this certain contact.

While you can block iMessage senders on your iPhone or iPad, it hasn’t been possible in Mac OS X Mavericks until the latest update to 10.9.2, available through the Software Update panel of the Mac App Store.

Now, though, you can block and unblock any contact in your Contacts app with aplomb, right from your Mac.

When you’re typing in Terminal, it’s easy to access the commands you’ve previously typed with the Up arrow on your keyboard. This can be handy when you have to re-type a long, complicated command. Simply hit the up-arrow and you’ll get the previously entered command.

Hit the up-arrow again, and you’ll get the command you entered before that, and so on, cycling through in reverse order until you get to the very first command entered in that particular Terminal window.

Turns out, you can do a similar thing in Messages, too.

Chaatz is yet another mobile messaging service like WhatsApp and iMessage. Only it also comes with any number of custom phone numbers so you never need to use your real one, and it also lets you receive messages on your iPad. Neat huh?

SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard on Android, is coming to iOS through a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. A leaked promotional image for the app has been leaked on Twitter today, but it’s not yet clear when it will be available to download from the App Store.

Google controversially brought Gmail and Google+ closer together this week by introducing a new feature called Email via Google+, which allows anyone with a Google+ account to send messages to your Gmail inbox — even if they don’t have your email address. Unsurprisingly, most Gmail users aren’t so keen on it.

But you’ll be pleased to know there is a quick and easy way to disable Email via Google+ — just follow the steps below.

Some users have reported problems with sending text messages to their friends and family after the upgrade to iOS 7.

Typically, when iMessage is unavailable, your iPhone should send messages as SMS ones instead, denoted by the green chat bubble as opposed to the regular blue.

If, however, your iPhone won’t send texts automatically, here’s a possible fix.

The people behind Vybe are calling it a “smart bracelet,” because it’s missing a key element included in all smartwatches: the screen. Instead of relaying information through a display, Vybe vibrates, nagging you to look at your phone.

A device that repeatedly requires halting your current activity seems to defeat its own purpose — namely, untethering you from your phone. It’s also strange that Vybe’s promotional clip suggests you pick up your phone while driving, which is illegal in many states — including California, where WearVybe, the bracelet’s maker, is based.