How And Why To Use iMessage Polls

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using iMessage Polls, including some uses for them that you may not have thought of. 

A new feature in macOS 26, iOS26, iPad OS26, and so on is the ability to post Polls in Messages conversations. Now to do this you must be using iMessage, not SMS or RCS. You must, of course, be using an operating system that's 26 or later, and also so must all of the other people involved in the conversation. So if you have a mixed group, some people using Apple devices and some not, then you may not be able to post a Poll.

So the way to do this works the same no matter which device you're on. I'm going to show you here on a Mac but it works almost the same on the iPhone and iPad. I'm going to start a new conversation here and i'm going to add a bunch of people to this conversation. As you can see I've added some people here. They're all shown as Blue meaning they're all in iMessage. This is only going to work if at lease one device that they own has been updated to Operating System 26 or newer. 

Now to start a Poll you just click the little Plus Button. The same that you would to add any new feature to a conversation. I click Plus here then I'll see all the special features I can add. Now you may not see Polls if it's a brand new conversation that hasn't had a single message sent yet. Usually the case is that you've got the conversation going already, maybe it's been going for a long time and you want to start a Poll. But in this case this is a brand new one. I'm going to send a Hello message first to everybody. So now that the conversation is going if I click Plus I'll find Polls here. Click Polls and it allows you to insert a poll. Now all you need to do is add two of more choices. So let's say you're getting lunch for a meeting and you want to give people a choice. So you might type these three options. You're always going to see one extra choice here. Just ignore it. If you don't type something in there then it won't be included. Now I want to add a comment to this saying what this poll is for. I'll just press Return to send it.

Now you'll see the poll here and other people will see exactly the same poll. It does't look different for you because you created it. You can make a choice. As the poll creator you can choose just like anybody else. So if this is the kind of poll where you want to leave yourself out simply don't make a choice. The others can. So let's say one of the people made a choice, like this. So you can see their icon kind of peeks out behind here and you can see the bar gets a little bit bigger. If you make the same choice you'll see your icon there. As a matter of fact that empty circle represents you or whoever is looking at it. After you've made a choice you can click or tap again to remove that choice and you can click somewhere else to make a different choice. Notice the bars are now even. Notice this one that nobody has chosen is smaller. Here comes a third choice in from on of the other people and you can see now their name pops out here and this bar is a little bit larger than the other one which is larger than this one. So you can see who is winning by looking at the size of the bars. That's pretty much it. You just basically make choices like that and you can use it to help make group decisions. 

But there are a lot of little details that to know about. For instance, you can make more than one choice. So here I've chosen pizza but I can also choose paste salad. As a matter of fact I can choose all three if I wish. Choices aren't mandatory. Not everybody has to make one and they aren't restricted to just one choice. 

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Also notice, of course, that they are not anonymous. They can see who made each choice. As a matter of fact you can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad to bring up the Context Menu or tap and hold on the iPhone or iPad and choose Poll Details. This will show you exactly who has made which choices and who hasn't made a choice yet. The other thing you can do, is you can click again to Unchoose something. But people can do that at any time. After a decision has been made people can change their mind, in the poll at lease, even if in the conversation you have moved on from it. But you can't change someone else's vote. That goes without saying for most people. But even if you are the one who created the poll this doesn't give you any special permission to lock somebody out, change their vote, remove their vote, or anything like that. 

Another thing notice here where it says Add Choice. You can click that and add a fourth choice, like that. Then it gets added to the Poll. But note that anybody can add a choice. It's not restricted to the person who created the poll. That can be a very useful feature or very annoying depending upon your group. Also, there doesn't appear to be anyway to Edit these. So you can go to Poll Details and look at the choices here but there is no way to edit the ones that have already been added. So you can't change something. Also the results here anybody can see, both with the bars, with the icons on who has chosen what, and with Poll Details. This is available to everyone equally. 

So all this freedom for how polls are created, altered, voted on and seen by everybody means that these should probably be used for unscientific purposes among a group of friends or peers. You probably shouldn't use it when there is any politics or contentious stuff involved. For instance it is probably not a good idea to use a poll like this among members in an HOA or decide things among a board of directors. Things like that. But this simple polling structure can be used in other ways as well. 

For instance you can use it to gather attendance numbers, like this. I'll click Polls here and I'm going to make the choices yes and a tab to go to the next one, no tab again, and then maybe and then I'll add a Comment, like this. Now the advantage to this is you can quickly see how many yeses you get. So, for instance, if you need to decide how big of a meeting room to get this is to a group of, say, 30 people, well then it is pretty easy to see if you get 18 yeses, 2 maybes, to make sure you have room for at least 20. So when you need to count things it is really useful. Here's another counting example. Let's say you want to order tee shirts for everybody at your company. So you may ask for sizes, like that. Then ask people just to chime in with which size they want. So now you'll quickly be able to see how many of each size to order and by going to the Poll Details you'll be able to actually see who ordered what. 

Now remember now people can choose multiple things. This can come in really handy when you want to decide something and people may have multiple yes answers. Like for instance let's say you want to find out the best time to have meeting. So I'll create a poll here and then I'll have some meeting times. Say 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00. I'll ask like that. Then people may simply look at this and say I can make the 2:00 and 3:00 but not the 4:00 o'clock. Other people will chime in with different answers, like that. Then hopefully you might come up with a time that works for everybody or at least for most people. 

Sometimes the poll is not something that everybody in the group needs to fill out. For instance, you may have, say, a dozen friends in a group chat and you want to ask advice about something. Like something to buy. You don't need to put a description in the comment after it.  You can ask the description first as longs you're willing to followup with a poll right away. Now I've got this poll and maybe if just a few friends respond with an answer here, that's enough for you. Of course just having the question there and the poll may get people chiming in with more detailed opinion. 

Here's another interesting use. You know you get to that situation where you are plannings something, maybe a party, and you have a list of items that are needed for the party. You want people to select what it is they'll bring. You can use a poll for that. So your poll includes all of these things. Then somebody can chime in with which one they'll bring, like that. You an chime in with which one you'll bring, like that. Others can add something else, say if they decide they want to bring it and you can kind of organize the whole thing by using a kind of poll like this.

Here's my final tip. While it seems like Polls are something you need to get something like a whole group chat to be useful they actually can be used by two people in a regular iMessage Chat. Instead of asking somebody a question and then having them respond back with text, you can actually ask a question with a poll and then they can respond with just one tap. So the question can be like this. Then I'm going to click the Plus Button and choose Polls. It puts the message that I've typed so far as the description down there so if you feel like just typing it in that order you can. Then you can ask a question. Then you can post the poll like this. Now the idea is instead of them having to type one of these names they can simply tap one of those to respond. They still have the option to add a choice, if they want, or just type a response if they want to do that as well. You're just trying to make it easy for them. In addition to that you can always vote as well, kind of giving them a hint as to which one you would prefer. But as you can see it is perfectly useful for two people as well as a whole group.

So I hope this gives you some ideas as to how to use polls. Since they are so new, of course, people may be reluctant to use them because many friends haven't updated to iOS 26 yet or macOS 26 yet. But over time that concern will go away as more people get newer devices and keep their devices updated. I'm not sure if this will ever be supported across the platform but it is certainly a possibility as well. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.