As you may have heard, WhatsApp is starting to share some of users' account data with Facebook (things like your registered phone number and the last time you used the service) to improve targeted advertising and friend suggestions on Facebook and better fight spam on WhatsApp. Thankfully, you can easily opt out, right when the prompt goes up, or within 30 days of accepting the new terms, here's how.
Microsoft today pushed an update to its mobile Skype application for iOS, bumping the app's version number on the App Store to 6.22. The new edition includes several enhancements related to notifications and Skype Credit, which can now be purchased from within the app in more currencies than before. Skype for iPhone and iPad are available free on the App Store.
Learn how you can record voice clips inside the WhatsApp app on your iPhone and send them to a person or group. Additionally, we will show you how to listen to voice messages if you receive one and go over some troubleshooting tips in case you can't do these things.
Telegram, a secure instant messaging service that supports rich media attachments and optional end-to-end encryption, today refreshed its mobile app on the App Store with a few new features. Telegram for iOS, now bumped to version 3.11, offers some interesting new sticker packs and lets you archive those you no longer use.
You can now preview groups before joining them and store your messages and media in the new storage chat.
Telegram is available free on the App Store and Mac App Store.
Snapchat for iPhone, an ephemeral image messaging app, yesterday announced a new feature called Geostickers. Basically special stickers available in some of the biggest cities around the world, they can be applied to images and moved around before sending them. You can also stick these city-specific stickers on your Snaps.
Geostickers are available now in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Honolulu, London, Sydney, São Paulo, Paris and Riyadh.
The Digital Touch interface made its debut on the Apple Watch in April 2015. With iOS 10, Apple is bringing Digital Touch features to the Messages app and it does so much more than its wrist counterpart was capable of at launch.
With Digital Touch, you can doodle over live video, adorn your messages with animated kisses, digital taps and auto-dissapearing drawings and even send animated hearts and broken hearts to other people.
Today, we're taking a closer look at another nifty feature in iOS 10 Messages: the ability to express your angst or anger by shooting virtual fireballs at your recipient(s).
Just like rival WhatsApp, the popular Rakuten-owned Viber messaging application pushed an update to its App Store app this morning, bumping version number to 6.2 whilst adding a few new features related to handling sticker packages within the app. You can now share sticker packages with others and preview stickers before sending one in a chat. And to preserve storage space on the device, there's now the option to delete sticker packages you no longer use. Grab Viber for free on the App Store.
After launching a desktop Mac app in May, Facebook-owned WhatsApp today gave its iPhone application a little love with a new version now available on the App Store. WhatsApp 2.16.7 for iPhone includes three times bigger emoji when sent alone, a feature also found in iOS 10's Messages app. In this release, you can now zoom when recording videos within the app and select multiple chats to quickly archive, delete or mark as read.
Plus, thanks to under-the-hood tweaks chats now open a lot faster than before.
Facebook yesterday announced that its Messenger service has hit a major milestone: the software is now being used by more than one billion people every month to message their friends and family. Messenger saw a major surge in popularity after it was decoupled from the main Facebook mobile client, and especially since becoming a software platform in its own right with chat bots, apps, money payments, expanded emojis and other features.
Facebook Messenger is a free download from the App Store.
iOS 10's Messages app offers a number of new features and meaningful improvements, such as bubble effects, smarter emoji, full-screen animations and so forth. Moreover, iOS 10 turns Messages into a software platform of its own with support for third-party iMessage Apps, stickers and other downloadable items via the App Store.
We previously covered various Messages capabilities on iOS 10, like Spotlight Suggestions in chats, using Digital Touch to send animated kisses and broken hearts, managing read-receipts on a per-chat basis, to mention just a few. Today, we take a look at another cool Messages feature: the ability to automatically play appropriate full-screen effects based on certain messages.
Better late than never: 3D Touch gestures are now available within the free mobile Messenger app from Facebook. The latest Messenger update on the App Store increases the app's version number to 79.0, with Peek/Pop support on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus being the only change mentioned in release notes accompanying the 109-megabyte download.
On iOS 10, Spotlight Suggestions appear in more places than before. We recently told you about Spotlight Suggestions in the Look Up interface (formerly known as the Define feature). We also discussed iOS 10's expressive Messages app in depth and mentioned its super useful inline previews of URLs.
As it turns out, not only does Messages support inline previews of media URLs, but underlines specific terms in your chats—such as movie and app names—that Spotlight Suggestions can give you more info about.