LOS ANGELES: Apple's Messages app can do far more than just blue and green speech bubbles plus a few photos and videos – it now also lets you add a whole range of colourful effects to messages.
The problem is that the feature is tucked away where many people are more likely to find it by chance.
With just a single click on the small white send arrow in the blue circle, the text effects feature from iOS 18 let you inject some excitement or humour to your chats.
Here is how it works:
- Write your message and then press and hold the send button.
- In the following menu, you can choose whether the effect should apply only to the speech bubble or to the background.
- Select the desired effect and then press the send button to send.
These effects are available in the Messages app:
- Slam: The speech bubble "slams" into the background and everything briefly shakes.
- Loud: The speech bubble grows to a huge size, shakes and then shrinks again.
- Gentle: The text in the speech bubble shrinks and then grows back to its original size.Invisible
- Ink: The text initially appears as moving dots and only becomes readable after a tap.
There are also additional effects in iOS 18. When composing messages, it's worth looking at the column with text suggestions above the keyboard.
On the right-hand edge there is a large "A" with three lines. If you tap it, you can choose formatting for the message such as bold, italic or underlined, or select further effects.
For example:
- Big text, small text
- Shake effect
- Nod effect
- Exploding text
- Ripple, Bloom and Jitter
– dpa
