These 8 New Texting Features in iOS 18.2 Will Make Your iPhone Texts Sizzle

When you want to send a message, a simple text is not always enough. In person, you’d wave your arms or point, but until recently, texting someone was like standing still: simple words without any emphasis. The Messages app in iOS 18.2 now gives you all kinds of embellishments, bold And italics to make words explode.

And that’s just the beginning of the new stuff.

Animated effects and text formatting make chatting more fun, and RCS support means your friends with Android phones can finally send high-resolution images. If your brain is active late at night, you can schedule texting at a more reasonable time without waking anyone.

And don’t forget the ability to send texts back from a satellite and create your own emoji with it Genmoji — A Apple Intelligence feature on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and select iPad models.

Here are eight new features in the Messages app you should know about.

Learn more: iOS 18 review: get ready to personalize your iPhone

Also, if you’re new to the new system, be sure to check out the settings you need to change now. And don’t miss them 10 hidden features of iOS 18.

Thanks to RCS messaging, you will be able to communicate better with Android users

Adding the Rich Communication Services protocol to Messages should reduce friction when texting with friends with Android phones. It allows read receipts and gives you higher quality image transfers and end-to-end encryption (but keeps Android message bubbles green).

If your carrier supports RCS, chances are you don’t need to do anything to use it. Go to Settings > Applications > Messages > RCS Messaging and make sure that RCS Messaging is on.

You can also send text messages via satellite

The Emergency SOS via satellite feature introduced with the iPhone 14 has been a real lifesaver. When you don’t have a cell signal, you can connect to a satellite and exchange short text messages with emergency responders.

With this infrastructure in place, Apple also opens Messages to non-urgent texts. If you’re out of cellular or Wi-Fi range and you have an iPhone 14 or later, Messages will prompt you to connect to a satellite. When connected, Dynamic Island expands to help you stay pointed at the satellites above you.

You can then text people as you normally would, and features like emoji and Tapbacks should still work. If you would like to view a demo of the feature, visit Settings > Apps > Messages > Satellite Messages > Satellite Connection Demo. Or just go out to the middle of nowhere and try it yourself.

You can now format text in Messages

I don’t want to sound like “that typography guy,” but it’s long bothered me that one of the only ways to emphasize text in Messages is to make it all caps. As a society, we haven’t developed typography for hundreds of years or invented the most sophisticated computing devices just to yell at us through text.

So yeah, I guess I’m that guy. I feel better now that I can express myself using bold, italicsunderlined and crossed out text in conversations with my friends who also use iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

You can apply formatting to an entire sentence, to individual words and letters, or to combinations thereof, like this:

1. Type your message.
2. To apply formatting to the entire message, tap the icon Format button in the suggestion bar; All your text is highlighted. Or, to emphasize just one word, double-tap to select the text, then press the button Formatting button. You can also choose Text effects from the options that appear above the selection.
3. Tap one of the options at the top of the formatting panel that replaces the keyboard: bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough.

If you format a message sent to someone running an older system, they will only see plain text, which could be confusing if you used strikethrough to indicate deleted words.

You can animate your text messages

This is where I discard any pretense of being a typographic purist. A message or selected words or letters can be animated in one of the following eight styles. Need to announce big news with more emphasis than bold text? With iOS 18, you can add several new animation options to your text. The large animation enlarges the size of your letters. Or maybe just mentioning that it’s freezing outside doesn’t convey the teeth-chattering cold – apply the Jitter animation to make the letters jitter.

Adding animation is as easy as formatting text:

1. Type your message.
2. Press the Formatting in the suggestions bar to select the entire text. Or select individual words or letters and then press this button.
3. Tap one of the animation styles to apply it: Large, Small, Shake, Nod, Explode, Ripple, Bloom, or Jitter.

You can mix animations in a message by making selections and applying different styles to them. However, you cannot apply more than one animation to a selection; a word cannot tremble and then explode, for example. As with text formatting, a message appears as plain text to anyone not running iOS 18, iPadOS 18, or macOS Sequoia.

Even with these new features, I want more: text formatting And text animation. Currently you can use either one. But if Apple engineers can create something as complex as eye tracking for the Vision Pro, they may achieve it in a later update.

You can disable autoplay animations, if that’s not your thing

Let’s say your friend just installed iOS 18 and wants to try out all the animation effects in a series of messages, creating a screen full of thrilling, resized, choppy, explosive text. You think with all this migraine-inducing animation, what did Apple trigger?

Don’t worry, because you can configure the animations so that they don’t repeat automatically. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and turned off Autoplay message effects. Your friend can still send animated text that will play once when you receive it, but you won’t be subjected to the animation repeating.

You can add any emoji or sticker as a tapback in Messages

Sometimes words are useless. You can reply to someone’s message using a Tapback icon to express your love, agreement, disagreement, laughter, concern, or curiosity. They apply quickly and get your answer across easily.

They’ve also been limited to just six icons, and in monochrome no less.

With iOS 18, Messages adds color (and some cartoon shadows) to these icons, but also the ability to reply with any emoji or sticker. Here’s how to do it:

1. Touch and hold a message until the Tapback bubble appears.
2. Tap the emoji button just below the other icons. You can also swipe left on the bubble to view recent emojis, stickers, and a gray emoji button that leads to the emoji library.
3. In the emoji picker, choose a sticker (left side) or one of hundreds of emoji.

You can create your own unique emoji using Genmoji

One of the Apple Intelligence features related to messages on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro models is the ability to summarize incoming texts in their notifications. iOS 18.2 brings another option to the Messages app: Genmoji, a way to create your own emoji on the spot by describing whatever you want. (It also works on iPads with M-series processors and the latest iPad mini.)

But before you start, you will need to sign up for the waiting list in the Image Playground app. Once you are accepted, you can do the following:

1. While talking to someone, press the emoji button to display the emoji options.
2. Press the Genmoji Button to the right of the Describe Emoji field.
3. Type (or use dictation to speak) a description of what the Genmoji should look like. You can type something like “blue bird” or “crying surf emoji” and the app will start creating variations of your descriptions. (Learn more about create a better Genmoji.)
4. Browse the icons it creates until you find one you like. You can also edit the description to change the parameters of the generated image.
5. When you have a Genmoji you like, tap Add.

The new emoji appears inline in your text and is added to your Recent emoji collection. It also appears as a sticker that you can add.

You can schedule text messages using Send Later

I know which friends are likely to get up at midnight to respond to a text and which ones I would probably wake up from. Because I want the second category to continue to be my friends, the ability to schedule text messages in the Messages app is ideal for when I want to share a thought but don’t need an immediate response.

To send a message at a specific time, follow these steps:

1. Type your message.
2. Press the More (+) button.
3. Faucet Send later; you may need to swipe up to find it in the list of apps and features.
4. In the time picker that appears, set a day and time to send the message.
5. Tap the Send Message button (the up arrow) to schedule it.

Scheduled messages are displayed with a slight dotted border.

If you need to change the timing later, tap To modify above the message, then choose Change time of the menu. Also, if you schedule messages often, I recommend moving the Send Later option higher in the More list for easier access.

For more, see how Apple redesigned the Photos app in iOS 18 and learn all about the new Passwords app that syncs across devices and platforms.