Messaging Enhancements

Apple’s Messages app gets a bit of love in iOS 17.2, with Apple delivering on some of the things it promised at WWDC.

Specifically, there’s now a catch-up arrow to take you back to the first unread message in a long conversation thread, which can be especially useful in group conversations when other people have been chatting away all day while you’re focused on other things.

There’s also a new “Add Sticker” option in the context menu to let you more easily use stickers as tapbacks. This was possible before by dragging and dropping stickers onto message bubbles, but that was more cumbersome and less intuitive. The new menu item makes this trivially easy to do by comparison.

Lastly, iOS 17.2 adds the long-awaited iMessage Contact Key Verification, which many folks expected to arrive in an iOS 16 point release. However, this isn’t something most people will need, as it’s intended to protect you from “exceptionally advanced adversaries” capable of deeply penetrating Apple’s cloud servers and “inserting their own device to eavesdrop on these encrypted communications.”

Anybody can toggle it on — the option is under your Apple ID in the iPhone Settings app — however, it’s an important security feature for “users who face extraordinary digital threats,” such as journalists, human rights activists, and government officials.