5 iMessage Tips You Didn’t Know Exist
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If you have an iPhone, chances are that you use Apple’s messaging feature called iMessage. If you want to master iMessage then you’ve come to the right place. Learn how to become a faster and more efficient texter by using iOS features that might not always be obvious. Here we review all of the best iMessaging tips that you didn’t know about.
Enable/Disable “Read Receipts”
If you have your “Read Receipts” on, it means the person you are texting (if they also have iMessage) can see when you have read their text messages. This can be both a good and bad feature; you can have transparency with the person you are texting, but you may not love your friend knowing you have read their texts and didn’t respond right away. You can turn this off and on by following the below steps:
- Open the Settings App
- Click on Messages
- Slide to either Enable or Disable the Send Read receipts
Note, if you do enable this feature on your iMessage it will say “Read at (specific time)” beneath your latest text.
Sometimes when you’re writing to your friends, you really want to emphasize a point without having to tap the Caps button with each letter. In order to make this easier on you, open up your keyboard simply double tap the shift key to turn it into the caps lock key. Less tapping and you get to make your point faster!
If you have the 10.8 version of OS X and up, you can send messages from your Mac. This is the best way to send texts to people if you can’t have your phone out when you are at work or school. Remember, you can only send texts to those who also have an iPhone, but with the latest updated to OS X you can send messages to Android numbers as well. Complete these steps on both your Mac and iPhone:
- Sign in with your Apple ID on both your computer and your iPhone.
- Open up the Settings App
- Select Messages
- Enable iMessage on your iPhone
- Click on “Send & Receive”
- Make sure the correct Apple ID and phone number are associated with your device
- Where it says “Start New Conversations From” you can select your phone number
The last step is so that when you text people your phone number shows up instead of your Apple ID email address.
If you are meeting a friend somewhere and want to make sure they know exactly where to go, you can send them your exact location via iMessage. To do this:
- Go to Apple Maps and select the arrow in the bottom left
- Tap the share button on the bottom right (this looks like a rectangle with an arrow coming out of it)
- Select “Message” and it will text a map image to the person you want to send it to
If you are in Google Maps then you can:
- Press down and hold anywhere on the map to drop a pin
- Tap the pin and select “Share” on the right
- Pick Message
- You also have the option to tap “copy to clipboard” and paste the unique URL into your text.
It’s almost inevitable that you will want to send a word that has an accent on it. Whether you want to say Voilà! Or just a friendly word in Spanish, using accents will make your text more accurate, and make you seem more cultured. You don’t have to download an entire keyboard to do this though. To put an accent on a letter, simply hold the letter down on your keyboard and it will reveal every accent available to the letter.
Keyboard shortcuts are great for quick texting. Apple already setup “On My Way!” as a default shortcut for “OMW”. You can make shortcuts for specific phrases such as “I’m late” or “I’m almost there!” To setup shortcuts for iMessage:
- Open up the Settings App
- Open up General Settings
- Tap on the Keyboard
- Scroll to the bottom and click on the Add New Shortcut
- Add whatever shortcut you want
For example, if you are in a hurry and want to type something like “I’m Coming soon” you can make the shortcut “ICS” and iMessage will automatically correct it for you. You also have the option to delete default shortcuts that Apple has previously installed.
