The Messages app gets more new features with each iteration of iOS, but whether you use all those features continues to be a pressing question that needs to be explored.
If you feel like you don’t use all the modern features in the Messages app, you can use a new free jailbreak tweak called NoMessageButtons by iOS developer NeinZedd9 to remove extraneous buttons from the interface and achieve a minimalist look and feel.
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I could schedule iMessages or text messages to send at a future date?” Well, now you don’t have to just sit and wish for such functionality anymore.
A jailbreak tweak called Kairos 2 by iOS developer CP Digital Darkroom enables iMessage and SMS scheduling right from the stock Messages app on your jailbroken iPhone or iPad.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to turn on two-way iCloud sync for the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to have your texts synced and updated across all your devices.
Apple's expressive Messages app gained some interesting fullscreen effects with last year's release of iOS 10. With iOS 11, Apple is bringing a pair of brand new effects to the built-in messaging app, called “Echo” and “Spotlight”.
The two new effects are in addition to the existing ones: Balloons, Celebration, Confetti, Love, Lasers, Fireworks and Shooting Star. To use these effects, press the Send button in Messages with 3D Touch, then tap the Screen tab at the top to swipe through real-time effect previews.
Echo, as the title suggests, multiplies your text all over the screen. Spotlight puts a large spotlight on your chat bubble to emphasize your text.Watch the new Messages effect in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur08nXULKvo
Subscribe to iDownloadBlog on YouTube.
As for the so-called bubble effects, no new ones have been added in iOS 11. iOS 10 currently includes five different bubble effects: Slam, Loud, Gentle and Invisible Ink.
How do you like the two fancy new effects in Messages for iOS 11?
Let us know by posting a comment below.
Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference today that Messages on iOS 11 will now synchronize your chats across devices via iCloud while making it a lot easier to get to your favorite iMessage apps and stickers using a redesigned app drawer.
With the redesigned drawer, your favorite iMessage apps and stickers live as horizontally-scrollable thumbnail icons lined alongside the bottom of the interface. Before today, getting to a sticker pack or an iMessage app you wanted to use was a multi-tap affair. With a new Messages in iCloud feature, when you sign in to a new device all your existing conversations will be automatically synchronized, and stay in sync.
For example, if you delete a message on your iPhone it will get automatically deleted from Messages on your iPad, and vice versa. And because your full Messages archive is now synced via iCloud, iOS 11 only keeps the most recent messages on the device while downloading older ones on demand.
As a result, Messages will consume a lot less storage space on your device, and device backups will be faster, too. According to Apple, iOS 10 is now installed on 86 percent of supported devices in the wild, up from the 79 percent adoption rate for iOS 10 reported on February 20, 2017.
iOS 10 features 96 percent customer satisfaction.
Image: The current Messages app on iOS 10.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today published an interesting patent application filed for by Apple, which indicates that the Cupertino company might be exploring much deep integration between the Siri personal assistant and its iMessage message platform.
Titled “Intelligent automated assistant in a messaging environment”, the company's patent application proposes chatbot-style Siri functionality within the context of the Messages app for those times when using voice-based interactions would be impractical, like in noisy environments such as libraries, movie theaters and so forth.
The patent application appears to be an enhanced version of Apple's prior invention, titled “Virtual assistant in a communication session,” filed for last year and outlining basic Siri-Messages integration via bot-style commands.
Today's patent application includes deep Siri integration with audio, video and image files, as well as with deep links to websites/apps and more. The system could potentially permit users to use image and video recognition with Siri, asking the personal assistant to, say, send an image of a Volkswagen Beetle to a contact or return a text-based web answer.
Siri cannot process images in its current form.
Other image-related queries could include “Where is this?”, “What insect is this?”, “Which company uses this logo?” and more. Siri would be able to remember user preferences and data, too. In one embodiment, a user sends a picture of a bottle of wine and says, “I like this wine” to have Siri remember this preference.
She would also be able to store custom text for later retrieval.
Lastly, Apple proposes chatbot-like functionality where the AI-driven assistant would offer its services to chat participants in a manner not unlike the AI assistant in Facebook's Messenger app. The system could intelligently provide relevant information in the text form about stuff like a nearby restaurant while being able to suggest transportation options and even create an entry in each chat participant's calendar about an upcoming meeting.
Here's an excerpt from the patent abstract:
User input can be received and in response to receiving the user input, the user input can be displayed as a first message in the GUI. A contextual state of the electronic device corresponding to the displayed user input can be stored. The process can cause an action to be performed in accordance with a user intent derived from the user input. A response based on the action can be displayed as a second message in the GUI.
Siri currently includes a feature that allows you to edit your queries by typing, but it's not very practical as it's only available after the user has initially issued a voice-based command to the personal assistant.
Apple's technology, assuming it sees the light of day, would permit users to review previous Siri interactions in a chronological format. Today's patent application was first filed for in May 2016 and credits Apple engineers Petr Karashchuk, Tomas A. Vega Galvez and Thomas R. Gruber as its inventors.
If you can’t stand the stock look of your stock Messages app, then maybe it’s time to put that jailbreak to good use.
A new free jailbreak tweak called BetterMessages by harrywantstodev provides you with a number of new customization options for making your Messages app look unique when compared to everyone else’s.
As previously announced, Starbucks today updated its iPhone app with the ability to send gifts through Apple’s iMessage system and pay for them with Apple Pay directly in the Messages app. Named Starbucks Gifts, the software requires you to set up Apple Pay on your device before you can purchase gift cards in $5, $10 or $25 denominations. Today's update also brings notifications, a store location filter for the Nitro cold brew and other perks.
The Yalu iOS 10 jailbreak has been around for a few months now, and since developers have had ample time to launch some amazing tweaks for Apple's latest jailbreakable firmware, it would only make sense to follow up with a series of themed recaps.
In this piece, we’ll discuss (in our opinion) the best jailbreak tweaks for the Messages app since the iOS 10 jailbreak was conceived.
Privacy is a big concern for a number of people, and one of the things that can be considered an invasion of this simple right is when people look over your shoulder to see what and who you’re texting.
A new free jailbreak tweak called MaskMe10 by RIshanan gives you some peace of mind by providing you with masking options for your incoming message notifications.
When privacy is a concern of yours, sometimes you need to be mindful of the notifications that pop up from apps, as they can easily make sensitive information readable by anyone who might be looking over your shoulder.
While some apps like Mail, Messages, and Facebook Messenger come with internal settings for hiding message content, not all messaging apps do, or do it as well. That’s where a new free jailbreak tweak called NotifyCensored by Pax Cex will come in handy.
Admittedly, I have a love/hate relationship with read receipts. I like getting them, and I don’t particularly mind sending them to people, but sometimes I want to read someone’s message in peace without notifying them until I'm ready to deal with the consequences.
You could go into Settings and disable read receipts temporarily, but this becomes more of a nuisance than it’s worth. Fortunately, a free jailbreak tweak called Delay Read Receipts (iOS 10) by iOS developer HiDan helps by preventing read receipts from getting sent to your recipient until you’re ready.