Messages app

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Messages app:

Just how hot are those new M3 MacBook Pros? [The CultCast]

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Apple's M3 Max chip sitting in front of flames. The CultCast episode 621.
Just how extreme is the MacBook Pro's thermal throttling?
Original photo: Christopher Burns

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Tests performed on the M3 MacBook Pros reveal the performance-crushing effects of thermal throttling and skimpy RAM. Erfon is not impressed!

Also on The CultCast:

  • Apple shocks everyone by pledging to support Rich Communication Services for better texting between iPhones and Android devices.
  • Griffin runs down some of the most interesting new features coming soon in iOS 17.2.
  • Apple reportedly plans to overhaul the iPad lineup next year, and a mammoth 12.9-inch iPad Air is apparently on the menu.
  • If the iPhone 16 gets exclusive AI features, will Siri really get smarter? We’re extremely skeptical.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

Shocker: Apple commits to RCS for better texting with Android users

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iMessage bullying
But we don't yet know if blue and green bubbles will remain.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

In what is apparently an enormous change of direction, Apple reportedly plans to add support for Rich Communication Services to the iPhone Messages app in 2024. This will enable iPhones and Androids to communicate more effectively, with more of the bells and whistles associated with Apple’s proprietary iMessage platform.

It also could be the end of the green bubble versus blue bubble controversy, though not necessarily.

iOS 17 Messages app can make Live Photos and all emoji into stickers

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With Messages in iOS 17, you can turn subjects you've taken from your photos into stickers.
With Messages in iOS 17, you can turn subjects you've taken from your photos into stickers.
Photo: Apple
WWDC23

WWDC23’s keynote wasn’t just about big OS and hardware releases. It also brought some fun stuff — like new sticker functionality coming to the Messages app and beyond.

Using Messages on your iPhone (and perhaps elsewhere), you should be able to liven up your texting by turning any emoji, photo subject or even Live Photo (short video) into a sticker you can drag into any text bubble — or anywhere you use emoji.

Insiders are buzzing about Apple’s upcoming headset [The CultCast]

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CultCast 595: AI-generated image of Apple CEO Tim Cook wearing an AR/VR headset, along with the CultCast logo.
No, Apple's headset likely won't look like this AI-generated image.
Image: Cult of Mac

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Well-placed sources say Apple’s AR/VR headset blew them away. Even the guy who dreamed up the Oculus Rift says it’s great.

The more we hear about the device nobody seems to need, the more intrigued we become. And with WWDC23 just weeks away, we don’t have long to wait for answers to our questions. In the meantime, we can imagine the possibilities …

Also on The CultCast:

  • How Apple’s M3 chip will stack up against its predecessors.
  • Five hidden features in iMessage that you should try ASAP.
  • Erfon finally gives us an update on his beloved, but beleaguered, original HomePod.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

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5 hidden features in iMessage

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Hidden iMessage Features
You probably won’t find these features on your own.
Image: Jonatan Svensson Glad/Wikimedia Commons/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

In the United States, iMessage is one of the first features iPhone users mention as a benefit over Android. In the rest of the world, nobody cares, because everyone uses WhatsApp and other cross-platform services.

But there are a lot of cool features inside the Messages app these days — we’ve previously covered how to edit and unsend messages and share your screen. Here are five more hidden features inside Apple’s messaging app. Keep reading or watch the video below.

How to back up your iMessage history and save on storage space

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Back Up Just A Minute
Or, more accurately, back up your iMessage history.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

You can back up your text messages (and iMessages) with iMessage Exporter, a free tool for the Mac. Whether you want to preserve your family message history for sentimental reasons, or need to keep conversation records for business, iMessage Exporter will get the job done.

You might already back up your messages in iCloud, but Apple charges an arm and a leg for space. You can save space (and money) by making a local backup and clearing out your cloud storage.

Share your screen to (and from) any Mac, right from the Messages app

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Help Out Your Parents
Screen Sharing is a great way to give remote tech support.
Image: Daniel Aragay/Wikimedia Commons/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

A little-known feature in macOS lets you share your Mac’s screen to someone else’s Mac directly from iMessage — no third-party apps or downloads required.

It’s great if you need to give tech support to a family member in a pinch; often you just need to see what’s happening instead of counting on what your dear old father is trying to describe over the phone. Get him to share his screen with you, and you likely can solve his problem quickly.

Even better, it’s not complicated setting up screen sharing on a Mac like it is on a PC. It takes only a few clicks in the Messages app. Let me show you all around this awesome hidden feature.

Apple makes Messages safer for kids in more countries

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UK iPhones will soon scan for iPhone sexually explicit images in texts sent to children
The iPhone's Communication Safety in Messages feature is expanding to half a dozen more countries around the world.
Image: Apple

iPhone users in six additional countries have access to a tool intended to protect children from sexual predators. The countries now getting access to Communication Safety in Messages are in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

The optional feature warns kids if they receive or attempt to send photos containing nudity.

How to edit and unsend messages in iOS 16

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Edit messages, undo send and mark messages as unread in iOS 16.
Edit messages, undo send and mark messages as unread in iOS 16.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Have you ever wanted to edit and unsend messages in iOS? Like when you texted your mom “Finally got laid today” when you meant to say “paid.”

Thankfully, with iOS 16 and Apple’s other upcoming OS upgrades, you can edit and unsend iMessages. Let me show you how this feature works.

iMessage gets competitive new features in iOS 16

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iMessage conversation, with an edited message notated by a label
In iOS 16, you'll be able to edit your iMessages to ensure you don't accidentally call your boss Babe... again.
Photo: Apple
WWDC22 - Brought to you by CleanMyMac X

Apple’s Messages app is getting great new features in iOS 16 that will give users greater control over the way they communicate with friends, family and co-workers.

iMessage is already arguably one of the biggest chat services, thanks to its deep integration with iPhone and the rest of the Apple ecosystem. The new features, including the ability to tweak or delete messages that have already been sent, should make it even more competitive — and potentially less embarrassing.

Meet friends, track kids, send your ETA: How to use location sharing on iPhone

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How to share your location on iPhone: Location sharing is a powerful iOS feature that can quickly connect you with friends and family.
Location sharing is a powerful iOS feature that can quickly connect you with friends and family.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Location sharing is a highly versatile and useful feature of iOS. When you’re trying to meet up with someone, traveling in a new place or spending a day out with friends, you can quickly share where you all are. It proves super-handy in big public spaces like malls, amusement parks and stadiums.

Giving directions on precisely where to pick up someone along a street block or in a parking lot is made much easier by sending a pin in an iMessage chat. With Family Sharing, I can see if my wife is on her way home without first sharing her ETA in Apple Maps. Another benefit is that I can use Find My to ping her phone if it’s lost in the house.

Here’s how to use location sharing.

iPhone will soon alert parents if kids send or receive nude pics

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iPhone Messages app will warn parents if kids send, receive nude photos
Children and parents will be alerted by the Messages app of sexually explicit photos.
Photo: Apple

Starting with iOS 15.2, iPhones will be able to detect if an iPhone or iPad user gets or sends a text with sexually explicit photos. The goal is to protect children from sexual predators.

The feature is optional and uses on-device machine learning so that Apple does not have access to the images.

macOS 11 Big Sur ushers in sweeping changes to Mac

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WWDC 2020: It's official: The next version of macOS will be called
It's official: The next version of macOS will be called "Big Sur."
Photo: Apple

WWDC 2020 The next Mac operating system, called macOS Big Sur, will bring the biggest design overhaul in nearly two decades, Apple said Monday. In addition to the massive visual upgrades, MacOS Big Sur will usher in huge changes to the Messages, Maps and the Safari web browser.

Apple unveiled the massive changes coming to macOS on Monday during the company’s keynote kicking off this year’s online-only Worldwide Developers Conference.

“This year, we’re taking the macOS experience you love even further,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior VP of software engineering, as he launched into a deep dive into changes coming soon to Mac.

How to make a Group FaceTime call on iPhone, iPad or Mac

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Group FaceTime is a great way to stay in touch with your family and friends during coronavirus quarantine.
Group FaceTime is a great way to stay in touch with family and friends.
Photo: Apple

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, loads of self-isolating people are turning to FaceTime, Skype, Zoom and WhatsApp video to stay in touch with friends and family. And what better way to keep in touch than to chat to everyone, all at the same time? One of the easiest and most secure ways to stay in touch is to make a Group FaceTime call.

Here’s how to set up a Group FaceTime call and add (almost) as many people as you like to it.

Congress might give law enforcement a ‘backdoor’ into encrypted messages

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Know how to hard-lock your iPhone in a hurry.
Congress might use child abuse as an excuse to weaken the encryption in Apple Messages and similar apps.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

No one could protest legislation aimed at curbing child sex abuse, but a bill that reportedly will be introduced soon in the US Congress could have much wider consequences. One result might be a legally mandated requirement that messaging services have a “backdoor” so that law enforcement can read all encrypted messages.

Siri’s been reading my messages and I love it

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Announce Messages with Siri
Getting Siri to read iMessages is AirPod Pro’s best feature.
Photo: Cult of Mac

As of iOS 13, you can have your iPhone read out incoming iMessages through your AirPods. And this — along with their awesome sound and noise-canceling abilities — is my favorite feature of the AirPods Pro. On paper, it’s a small feature in a long list. But in everyday use, Announce Messages with Siri makes a huge difference in how I use my iPhone.

How to use iOS 13’s new ‘Remind me when messaging’ feature

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Remind when messaging
Remember things, when you need them.
Photo: Estée Janssens

The Reminders app got a total revamp in iOS 13, making it way quicker and easier to add due dates, alerts and location-based notifications to new reminders. But it also added one killer new feature: Remind me when messaging.

This lets you add a contact to the reminder, and the next time you’re messaging that person, a notification will pop up.

See iOS 13’s best unannounced features [Video]

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iOS 13 on an iPhone X
Have you upgraded yet?
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

After spending time playing with the iPadOS 13 developer beta and iOS 13 beta , it’s clear there are tons of nice changes coming to Apple’s mobile platforms this fall.

Cupertino highlighted the biggest ones at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. However, there’s a bunch of smaller stuff they didn’t tell us about. While there are hundreds of “under the hood” changes, these are the best iOS 13 features Apple didn’t announce.

Best unannounced iOS 13 features

How to add a custom iMessage avatar in iOS 13

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Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Now you can use Memoji in iMessage profiles.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You know how you can add an avatar to pretty much any social app ever, and all your friends, family, contacts, etc., will see it? Well, in iOS 13 you can finally do the same for iMessages.

No longer will you have to hope that your contacts use a nice photo of you, or worry that your boss is using a picture of a cute pig or pussycat to represent you in the group chat. Now you can add and share your own avatar, or even a Memoji. Let’s see how.

How to make a great Memoji

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Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

iOS 12 lets you create Memoji, your own custom Animoji. What’s an Animoji? It’s a little animated character that — thanks to some facial recognition tricks from the latest iPhones’ TrueDepth cameras — copies your expressions live. This turns the cute Animoji critters into little virtual face puppets.

Now you don’t need to rely on a stock Animoji like Apple’s monkey, dog or space alien. You can create your own custom Memoji from scratch. You can make a virtual version of yourself, or you can create an original character. Or, as we’ll do today, you can copy a celebrity. Who? Let’s see …

iPhone lets Phillies fans order a ballpark beer by text

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It's the fullfillment of many a baseball fan's dreams: beer by text.
It's the fullfillment of many a baseball fan's dreams: beer by text.
Photo: Aramark

The Philadelphia Phillies and Aramark started a pilot program that lets fans order beer from their seats using an iPhone.

The service makes use of Apple Business Chat, a service that launched this spring designed to let customers send messages to companies without strings attached.

New Apple Pay ad miraculously makes payments funny

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New ad makes Apple Pay in Messages easy and funny.
Warning messages from your landlord aren't always a joke, but a new ad for Apple Pay in Messages is.
Screenshot: Apple

Apple Pay isn’t just for trips to Starbucks. It can also be used to send or receive money from friends. Or your landlord, as shown in a humerous new ad.

Money can be transferred in a simple text using the Messages app. This works for sending and receiving the cash, after Apple Wallet has been properly set up.

Watch the new advertisement for Apple Pay in Messages now:

How to remove location data from photos you share

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Remove location data maps on bench

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

When you share a photo via email, iMessage or most other apps, you also send the location of that image. No big deal, right? You’re only sending pictures to people you know anyway. But what about when you sell something on a site like Craigslist or eBay? If you don’t manually remove location data from your pictures, anyone can see where you took your photo, which is probably your home.

Right away, anyone can see where you live, and what you have at home. You still might not care, but if you do, here’s how to remove all that information before you send a photograph. (You’ll also learn about an interesting quirk in iMessage.)