12/7/20
9:00 am

What's New In the macOS Messages App In Big Sur

The Messages app has several new features in Big Sur, including inline replies, mentions, pinning conversations, custom icons and names for group conversations and more.

Check out What's New In the macOS Messages App In Big Sur at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at everything that's new in the Messages app in macOS Big Sur.
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So the Messages app got a major overhaul in Big Sur. A lot of new features were added. So the first new feature I want to show you is Pinning. So typically you'd have a list of conversations here on the left. At the top would be the one where you got the most recent message. But that's not always the one you want at the top. Sometimes you'll have ongoing conversations and you always want those at the top. You don't want a bunch of miscellaneous messages, maybe marketing things or two factor authentication codes, sitting at the top. So if you have a conversation you want at the top all you need to do is drag it there. You could see it pins it. You could pin multiple conversations there. You could easily remove them by dragging them back down. You could also Control click or two-finger click on a trackpad and use Pin or Unpin. Now notice in some cases you get a picture either from your contacts or that the person has setup in their Messages app next to their name. Sometimes you get just initials. 
Now in the case of an individual all you need to do is go into their Contact and change the photo used for them in the Contacts app. But what about groups. When there's a group conversation like this one you could set your own image and a name for that group. So Control click on it and choose Details. Now because this is a group I could change Group Name and Photo. So you could click here. You can assign a group name and you could choose a photo from your Photos Library. You can choose an emoji character or you could choose your own set of initials and then a color down here. You could even choose from some icons here below. 
Now one of the features I like the best in Messages is the ability now to reply inline to somebody. So, for instance, here I am in a group conversation and you could see Joe has asked me how I'm doing but before I got a chance to respond Mark came in with a Hello. Now if I respond, am I responding to Mark or Joe. So I could respond directly to Joe by Control clicking or two-finger clicking on this message here. Then I could use Reply and you could see how it singles out that message and I can reply. There are shortcuts for this as well. I'll use the Escape key to get out of that. I can use Command R and it will do an inline reply to the last message that was sent. But I could also click to Select a message and do Command R and it will respond to that one. I could also Shift Command R and respond to a previous one but leave the one at the top of the screen here. So this first message. 
Now when you respond to somebody like this you could see that it appears right under theirs there and when you click somewhere you just get this little 1 reply underneath. You could click to see that reply. Otherwise it appears also down here. You could see kind of a shadow of that message with that reply below. So it could make group messages a little less confusing.  
Another thing you could do now is mention individuals. So, for instance, I'm chatting with Joe and Mark here. If I were to ask Joe a question notice just by typing Joe's name it kind of gets this separate color here. If I click on it you could see their name comes up. I could select it there and you could see now it's in blue. That's going to appear as a mention of Joe here. They'll get a Notification saying that they were mentioned in the conversation. So for instance if they had gone in there and used Hide Alerts to put a Do Not Disturb on this conversation they would still get the message here. Of course that also depends on their setting under Messages, Preferences under General there is Notify Me When My Name is Mentioned.
Another way to mention an individual while just typing is simply to use the @ symbol. So I can type @ and then Joe and now you could see when I hit Space there or Return it makes Joe a mention. I didn't have to click on it and select Joe's name. 
Now, of course, a big new feature is the ability to use Memoji. Memoji would be a little character of yourself using different expressions instead of using an emoji. So I can click here and do Memoji Stickers and then I can select from a Memoji that I created before and use one of the stickers here of me doing a different expression. So for instance if I wanted to give a thumbs up I can use this one instead. It sends a little picture. So it will work even if somebody isn't on Big Sur or they are not even using a Mac. They'll still get the picture. 
Now most people have setup Memoji on their iPhone or iPad since it's been around there for awhile. But if you want to set one up on your Mac when you go to Memoji Stickers here you can click on the three dots button and you can create a new one. You can have several setup. But you could also use one of the Animoji which are Apple created little characters. So, for instance, if I wanted to use the alien there and use one of these little alien stickers instead. There are other things under here as well. One of them is the ability to select images and animated GIFs very easily. It brings up this little control here and you could search for something. So for instance if it's somebody's birthday I could search for birthday and come up with all these little animated GIFs and click here and send that. Note that there's also here a new Photos browser. So you click there and this is a little different. You could have done this before but the browser now is different with a different search box there. It comes up a little quicker and it allows you to choose one of your own photos here to send as a message. 
You also can click here and use Message Effects. So the first thing you want to do is type a message. Then you click here and use Message Effects. Then choose from one of these. So, for instance, you have the love balloon, a regular balloon, invisible ink which is really cool because it hides the message until they click on it, confetti, a little emphasis there, or emphasis with lasers, of things like that. So you can go through these different settings here and send a message using one of those effects. Of course the person on the other end has to be using iMessage with a new enough version of either iOS  or macOS to support these. This has been around for a few years in iOS so most people with iPhones would be able to see these. 
Now I mentioned before that sometimes you get a little picture here next to somebody's name. This will happen even if you didn't have a picture for them in your Contacts. Well, you can set that up yourself so people can have a picture of you next to your messages in their Messages app either on Big Sur or on iOS. Just go into Messages, Preferences. Then here under General you can setup Name and Photo Sharing. So you can go through here. You can customize a photo. You can choose from Memoji. You can choose from some other thing. You can pick from your Photos. So I'll choose this one here. I'll choose which sticker to use. Like that. Hit Done and I can choose whether or not I want this to actually replace my Apple ID image. Then I can choose a name, first and last, and whether or not to Share it automatically with Contacts or just Always Ask whether or not I want to share it. That will get a little alert in a conversation asking me if I would like to share my image and preferred name. So now I could see it here and I could always go back and Edit this.
That's what's new in Messages on the Mac. It's pretty much on par now with Messages in iOS and iPad OS which is nice to see.

Comments: 20 Responses to “What's New In the macOS Messages App In Big Sur”

Jeremy Brayshaw

8 months ago

Is there a way to include a CR (new paragraph) on the Mac? It uses a CR to actually send the message, which is sometimes annoying!

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

Jeremy: Option+Return.

Stuart Main

8 months ago

I am wondering if the “pinned” people could be synced amongst all of my devices; iPhone, iPad, and MBA?

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

Stuart: No, I don’t think so. But it is pretty easy to pin. And maybe you’d want different pinned conversations depending on the device.

Jon Shearer

8 months ago

Gary –
I tried to name a group of 4 persons.
When I selected “Details…”, Details did not present me with the “Change Group Name and Photo” option.
What gives”
I’m at macOS 11.0.1.

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

Jon: Not sure. I may have to do with the people in the group, maybe the person who started it, and whether it is iMessages or SMS.

nick

8 months ago

hey Gary, just checking if you’ve also experienced this. Typically, in past versions, as you start to type the recipient’s name, once it appears, all you had to do is hit the return key and it would accept that name. In this latest version, when the name appears, if I hit return it doesn’t fill in that name, it just returns a blank entry, so I have to select it with a mouse.

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

nick: Typing the recipients name WHERE, exactly? If I start a new conversation, type a couple of letters of the name until a suggestion appears, and press Return, I get the full name added. But maybe you mean in another place in Messages?

nick

8 months ago

should have specified…in the recipient’s field, your answer suggests that yours is behaving the way it should, in my case, when the suggested name appears, hitting Return doesn’t add that name, but selecting it with the mouse, it does add it

Judy Eastwood

8 months ago

Re responding in-line to an earlier text in a string in Messages, none of the methods you demonstrated works for me. Big Sur 11.0.1

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

Judy: Is the conversation in iMessages or an SMS conversation? I’d imagine that plain SMS doesn’t support this kind of advanced functionality.

Otto Vay

8 months ago

Hi there Gary,
How to make the option “images/animated GIF” appear on the menu. I found nothing related in Preferences, can you give me a help?
Greetings from Brazil!

Gary Rosenzweig

8 months ago

Otto: Are you sure you are using the latest macOS? Or maybe it is different in other countries?

Nancy

7 months ago

I am not able to “Change Group Name and Photo,” it is not offered nor am I able to add “Add Member”. Can you figure out why. I do have Big Sur 11.1 Thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

7 months ago

Nancy: Probably has to do with whether the group members are using iMessage or SMS.

Markus

7 months ago

In previous Messages, you could click on the details of a contact/conversation and see photos or files from that chat. That capability seems to have gone away with details only showing contact information. Any idea where the photos/files that were sent in previous messages are easily found? I know they exist in user–>library–>messages–>attachments… but that folder structure is tedious.

Gary Rosenzweig

7 months ago

Markus: I still see photos and files. When you bring up the details, are you scrolling down? They are under the contact info.

Markus

7 months ago

Thanks for following up Gary, they photos and files aren’t there for me. Perhaps the data is still back filling as it was a few years worth of attachments. Good to know that you’re seeing it and it’s not an intentional design/UX change.

Tom D

5 months ago

thanks for the tips on updated messages. i’m wondering if there is a way to delete or set ‘read’ to more that one message/conversation at a time. i’ve googled this and i don’t see anyone talking about it. i guess if i sync to all my devices this would would set do this form me. but can you do it when not syncing to other devices?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Tom: I don’t think there is a way to delete more than one at a time.

What's New In the macOS Messages App In Big Sur

Comments: 20 Responses to “What's New In the macOS Messages App In Big Sur”

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