Messages

Latest iPhone 7 ad is all about iMessage stickers

Apple on Monday via its YouTube channel shared a brand new television commercial for iPhone 7, titled “Sticker Fight”. Much like its September 2016 “Balloons” ad, the most recent 60-second video takes another iOS 10 iMessage feature to the real-world: sticker packs. “Say it with stickers on iPhone 7,” reads the tagline. Apple also created a new App Store section where you can download all of the stickers featured in the ad.

TranslucentMessages makes the iOS 10 Messages app translucent with stunning blur effects

Your iPhone is a tool of communication, so you might spend a lot of your time lurking in the Messages app. As you know, it's just as dull as almost every other stock app on your device; plain and white. Since you spend so much time in the app, why not give it a makeover that could make you enjoy using it even more?

That's where a new free jailbreak tweak called TranslucentMessages by Ayden Panhuyzen comes in handy, as it takes what is otherwise a boring UI and gives it some fancy translucent visuals.

MessageFilter: blacklist and whitelist words for specific conversations

If you have all kinds of contacts on your iPhone or iPad, ranging from friends and family, to significant others, to business partners and bosses, then you have a responsibility to take extra care to ensure your messages never go to the wrong person.

Helping to prevent sending messages that are intended specifically for certain people to the wrong person is a new free jailbreak tweak called MessageFilter by Frozen Penguin. It works by allowing you to set up a special blacklist and whitelist system to manage where certain kinds of messages are allowed to be sent.

AntiSocial enables the ‘Leave this Conversation’ button even in three-way iMessage groups

One of the things that really grinds my gears is when I get sucked into group iMessage conversations that I really don’t want to be in. Although rare, sometimes people do it just to wish a bulk of people a good holiday without sending individual messages, but other times people do it just to be annoying.

Unfortunately, Apple makes things even more difficult on you by limiting the ability to leave a group iMessage conversation to when there are four or more people in it, so if you’re being dragged against your will into a three-way iMessage conversation, then you'll find the button to leave will be grayed out.

That’s where a new free jailbreak tweak called AntiSocial by Tony Kraft comes in handy, as it enables the "Leave this Conversation" button even when you’re in a three-way iMessage conversation.

This tweak prevents people who text you like this from blowing up your phone with notifications

We all have that one friend that can’t consolidate all of their text messages into one neat message. Instead, they are apt to send multiple messages, one after the other, in order to complete just one sentence.

While the sender may not realize it, this is very annoying for anyone on the receiving end, as their iPhone will just repeatedly ‘ding’ and ‘buzz’ all over the place, and that’s why iOS developer Hrvoje Kostic made a new jailbreak tweak called DoNotAnnoy.

DarkMessages gives your iOS 10 Messages app a dark makeover

Dark mode-based jailbreak tweaks appear to be a pretty hot topic of conversation lately, and it would seem that this trend isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

A new free jailbreak tweak called DarkMessages by Sticktron is now available in Cydia that gives the Messages app on jailbroken iOS 10 devices a dark mode-styled makeover.

Littlemoji shrinks the large Emojis in the Messages app on iOS 10

Starting with iOS 10, Apple has super-sized all of the Emojis that you send and receive via iMessage whenever they’re used without any complementary text.

Because the Emoji experience on iOS 10 feels a lot more like Facebook Messenger’s sticker system now and not everyone’s on board with it, a new free jailbreak tweak called Littlemoji can be used to return them back to their pre-iOS 10 size.

How to read and write messages in landscape orientation on iOS 10

Apple's much improved, expressive Messages app is one of the hallmark new features of iOS 10. We've noticed that some people have been wondering if Apple has removed the message compose in landscape mode from Messages on iOS 10.

In iOS 9 and earlier, turning the device upside down allowed you to read and write messages in widescreen mode. On iOS 10, Messages defaults to showing a dedicated interface for handwritten messages in landscape orientation.

Thankfully, iOS 10 still supports reading and composing messages in landscape orientation with a tap of a special button, let us show you how.

Columba: a biteSMS alternative offering Quick Compose/Reply, scheduled messages, and more

Although biteSMS is no longer supported on the latest versions of iOS, a jailbreak tweak called Columba for iOS 9 brings some of the functionality biteSMS users loved to jailbroken iOS 9 devices.

Columba for iOS 9 comes complete with Quick Compose and Quick Reply, as well as a slew of other must-have features for sending and receiving messages from your jailbroken iPhone.

Apple patent would integrate Siri into Messages to assist with tasks via bot-style commands

You've been able to ask Siri to send messages on your behalf for a few years now and with iOS 10, Apple's expanded Siri capabilities to third-party apps like mobile payments. But if a new patent for a “Virtual assistant in a communication session” that the company filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is anything to go by, the virtual assistant could soon be integrated deep into Messages, assisting users with peer-to-peer payments, scheduling dinner and providing other chat bot-style interactions within message threads.