iPhone iMessage Tricks To Make Messaging Fun

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at some fun features of the Messaging app on your iPhone.

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Over the years Apple has built up a whole bunch of fun features in the Messengers app. You could use these when you're messaging somebody else also using iOS 13 on an iPhone or iPad. So first let's look at using bubble effects. Bubble effects you apply to the text bubble that the person receives. So, for instance, if I were to respond to this message like that I could just tap the send button. But I could also tap and hold the send button and then I get Send with effect at the top. You see it says Bubble and Screen. Make sure you tap Bubble and then you have these bubble effects. 

Slam, for instance, if you tap that you could see what it looks like. Each one of these is going to give you a preview. Loud will look like that. Gentle will look like that. Invisible Ink will actually show as kind of this noise until you tap the message and then it will reveal itself. Pick which one of these you want to send, like let's send it with Slam, and now that I've selected that I'll tap the Send button a second time and now it sends it. You could see what it looks like for the other person on your device as well.

Now also we saw the other types of effects were Screen effects. So tap and hold the Send button until we see Send with Effect at the top. But let's switch to Screen and now you could see all these different screen effects. So that first one there you could see fills the screen with all of those. You can swipe right to left to go to the second one which is a spotlight like that. You could see all the dots at the bottom showing where you are in the list of screen effects. So let's go to the next one. You could see these are balloons. This is confetti. A heart. Lasers. Fireworks. A shooting star and celebration is the final one. Now once you've picked this one and send it and they will see this on the other side. As a matter of fact this one even comes with a haptic effect. I could feel it in my hand as the explosions happen.

Some of these actually happen automatically. If you were to send something like Happy birthday and send that, it actually comes with the balloon effect. So I didn't have to choose the effect. Just saying the words Happy birthday will actually include that screen effect. Notice too there's a replay button under some of these. So if I wanted to replay the bubble effect I could just tap Replay or replay the celebration effect there after how are you.

So next we have reactions. Reactions are when somebody sends you a message you can respond but without actually having to send them another message. Instead tap and hold their message and it will come up with these various reactions at the top. You can see there are six of them There's a heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, ha ha, two exclamation points, and a question mark. So, for instance, if somebody asks you a yes or no question or something you want to respond with OK you can just do this and then tap the thumbs up and then a little thumbs up appears above the message and that's what they see on their screen as well.

Next let's take a look at a strip of apps that appear just above the keyboard. You can see there starting with the Photos app and then the App Store and I could tap and hold and you can see they enlarge a bit so I could see names. I can drag back and forth. So there are a bunch of different ones you get by default. One of those is called Images. Tap that one and it will bring up this GIF finder. You can find all sorts of different things here. So you could tap on the find thing and it will come up with a Search area, Recents, Categories, all sorts of things. So, for instance, I can search for Happy Birthday and it will come up with all these different GIFs. I can select one and then it will include that. I can still type a message there and it will send that as a GIF. You can find a GIF for almost any occasion or any movie quote or anything. Spend some time searching around in here for anything that you want. Just get an idea of what's available.  

There are other apps that you can use to send things. One of those is this thing called Digital Touch. This allows you to draw and it will recreate the drawing with an animation. So for instance I can draw like a little smiley face like that and I can send it. You can see they don't just get the resultant image. They actually get a little animation that shows it drawing. Now while drawing you can tap on the left side and get colors. So I can switch to a different color for instance. 

You can also tap the Camera button here and now you can do more things. You can use a video recording or a photo. So you can tap the white button on the left side to take a photo and then you can draw on top of it. Or you can take a video and draw around the video. Hit Stop and now you can see if I send it, it actually has the video of me talking and the drawing on top of the video. So it's kind of neat. You can do some other things with it. For instance if I stop recording and I tap and hold one finger you can see it creates a special effect here. If I just do a quick tap it does that. If I do two fingers you get a little kiss. There's a bunch of different effects. You can see I can tap that i button that appears at the lower right hand corner and it tells you all the different effects. This one takes a little bit of practice so I would just play around with it with a friend. Maybe go back and forth sending each other things and then you get good at it. Then you could use it in regular conversations for fun later. 

Now kind of like that is something called Handwriting. So Handwriting you won't see in vertical mode in your iPhone. But if I turn the iPhone horizontally now you could see in the keyboard, at the bottom right, is a little squiggle. I tap that and now I could actually write something out. There are some suggestions here at the bottom that I can use and I could switch back to the keyboard with the little keyboard button. While I'm in here I could actually write with my finger and then hit Done. Then I could go and send it and what I've written will be sent as a little image.

Now another app you could use is Stickers. Stickers is this little one right here. It basically allows you to use the Animoji. So like all of these little funny characters that come with your iPhone but also ones you create here. You can hit the three dots button there and create a new Memoji for instance. You can use any of those and with it selected you can go and select a Sticker. So a sticker is taking that face and throwing something else in it like a little heart there or a thumbs up. That kind of thing. So you can tap one of those and it just sends it as a quick picture. It's a little nicer than sending an emoji which is just generic. You're now sending something a little more custom. 

Now note Stickers also applies to third party apps. Third party apps, when you install them, can include different stickers that appear here in these tools. So, for instance, here's GarageBand and you can see a bunch of stickers are included with GarageBand. So I could send something like a drum kit like that. So there are all sorts of different apps. A lot of apps that are like food ordering apps so the company's logo and such will appear as a sticker and then maybe pictures of their food, little drawings of their food. So it's kind of fun. So you can go and look through and see what's there. You can always go to the More button at the end and see which ones that you have already in the list but also find other apps that you may want to go and add to the list.

Now another thing you could do that's not visual is to actually send audio. So you could see the little audio button at the right side of the typing field there. Just tap and hold that and you can record your voice. (How are you doing?) Now I can send it and that will get sent as a recording and the person at the other end can press the Play button to play it. This is also handy when it's not convenient to type. So you could send a quick little message just like doing walkie-talkie back and forth.

Now in addition to being able to record your voice you could also use those same Memoji or Animoji in the app here and you could choose one of Apple's Animoji like that or you could choose one that you've created on your own. If you hit the Record button it will record you talking so you get the audio and also the video of your little Animoji or Memoji talking. Hit Stop and then you could send that and they get the video and the audio here of your little Memoji head talking with the audio. So kind of a combination of using the audio recording and Animoji.

Of course you could also just tap the Camera icon on the left there and take a quick photo of yourself to go right into conversation or go to video and record a quick video and then take that. Hit Stop and then hit the Send button to send that video.

So one last thing I want to show you is how to play games using the Messages app. You have to get an app from the App Store. One of the most popular is GamePigeon and they've been there since the very beginning. But there are lots of other apps that will allow you to do it as well. So once you've installed this app, when you're back here in Messages it appears as an app here at the bottom. So we'll look here for GamePigeon. There it is. You could see all these different games you could play over Messages. 

So let's choose 8 Ball. I can send this, as a request, to the other person. Now they need to have the app as well. I believe it will prompt them to download it if they don't have it. They'll make their first move. Now it's my turn. I can hit the Play button and see what happened. So this is what they did. Now it's my turn. So now I could go and position this and, you know, make a play. Of course different types of games play in different ways. This is just how the pool game plays. At any time I could hit the X button to exit out of this. I will see when it's my move and go back in and play against them. You could see there are a bunch of different games here. Other apps you install just have one particular game that it plays. So it's a lot of fun and it's a great way to be able to play a game and talk with somebody at the same time over Messages. It's particularly great for long distance friendships where you can have a game as an excuse for just touching base with each other every once in a while.