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iOS 17 Messages App Features: Check In, Stickers, and More

There's some useful stuff in there for those who use it.

Personally, I'm happy they finally adopt swipe to reply just as basically every other app out there.

I'm looking forward to transcriptions and I was hoping Apple would roll this out ever since Google releases this on Android last year.

I'm still annoyed they thought voice messages needed their own separate app and even more that it's now permanently hidden behind the + menu. It's particularly infuriating because there remain two independent buttons for voice dictation right there.
 
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Artemis70 said:
I'm pretty sure that RCS support won't make any difference. People will continue to use WhatsApp.
Click to expand...
Oh I think you're right! However, if RCS is supported I can tell people reach me via iMessage or RCS, so then it's their problem how to reach me. But as long as I can't have RCS on my iPhone I have to give people SOME way to send me text, so I'm forced to use WhatsApp.

It's just silly really. I know in the US it's very common for people to use iMessage, so for most iPhone users it might be perfectly fine to just stick with that. But that's impossible in Europe. Why can't Apple admit that outside of the US iMessage is simply not a popular thing, and therefore offer us an open STANDARD as an alternative. You know, like we used to have in the past with mail, fax and e-mail and SMS. We could simply message anyone without caring about any corporate garbage behind that.
I'd love to go back to that kind of simplicity. I'm so sick of this proprietary message formats. Seriously who wants this, except the CEOs of Apple and Facebook?
 
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v0lume4 said:
Weird. I’ve seen where you can email people from your phone number. It’s sort of a dated thing, but if you “text” an email address, it’ll show something like xxxxxxxxxx@vzwpics.com (where the x’s are your phone number). But that’s always been auto generated by Verizon in my case. Maybe that’s the “MMS Email Address” in question? I’ve never seen that prompt.
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I get it every single time I open Messages. For years. Never figured out what it is.
 
jjudson said:
I don't give a crap about styles, stickers, emojis, social media silly message capability. All I want is for once-and-for-all to be able to do message forwarding like call forwarding to another phone so I don't have to carry two devices for work and play.

Seems idiotic to have one without the other...
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I'm guessing you want your work calls and texts forwarded to your personal phone? Does your work allow that and if so, why did they give you a work phone in the first place?
 
MacRumors said:
What I would like is a simple drawing app that I can just use the + button to give me quick canvas and pen to scribble with. I’m sure the normal Notepad draw tools would be great.

I used to use the Signature tool but the moved it away but I would use this the most.
Click to expand...
 
mburkhard said:
Oh I think you're right! However, if RCS is supported I can tell people reach me via iMessage or RCS, so then it's their problem how to reach me. But as long as I can't have RCS on my iPhone I have to give people SOME way to send me text, so I'm forced to use WhatsApp.

It's just silly really. I know in the US it's very common for people to use iMessage, so for most iPhone users it might be perfectly fine to just stick with that. But that's impossible in Europe. Why can't Apple admit that outside of the US iMessage is simply not a popular thing, and therefore offer us an open STANDARD as an alternative. You know, like we used to have in the past with mail, fax and e-mail and SMS. We could simply message anyone without caring about any corporate garbage behind that.
I'd love to go back to that kind of simplicity. I'm so sick of this proprietary message formats. Seriously who wants this, except the CEOs of Apple and Facebook?
Click to expand...
The worst thing is, loads of places do now start to essentially kill off MMS functionality.

Germany already had Vodafone (one of the big 3 providers) shut off MMS early 2023, with the other 2 to follow soon (2024). That essentially means their cross-platform group texting stopped working over night for certain users, with many people losing access to the functionality in the near future. No replacement provided by Apple, your only option is 3rd party apps like WhatsApp.

It doesn‘t really matter much here anyways, but it really shows how Apple does not care when they don‘t provide modern alternatives.
 
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What about allowing the microphone next to the text field to be a voice message (again?) like most other platforms.

It makes sense there, but now we’ve got two icons providing the same function with one causing confusion and hiding a common feature in a menu buried out of the way!

Unless this has changed in the betas? I haven’t tried them.
 
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The swipe to reply only works if it's from another iPhone.
In the meantime Android can not only reply to anyone but also press an actual forward button to forward messages and images to someone else. Which is a much easier than to long press, then press copy, then find the other person, then paste.
So many extra taps necessary in iPhone in general to do the same things as in Android. Very annoying.
 
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I’ll be the one person here who doesn’t hate 😂 I like the new design. it took some getting used to but what they’re going for makes sense—a cleaner look with all of the mini-apps (actions) that are in Messages these days, especially with the ability to install 3rd party ones.

Check In is fantastic. I go out a fair bit and it’s very useful to be able to get in my ride at the end of the night and let my brother know when I’m gonna be home safe—moreover, that he can call if I’m not home by that time, just to (lol) check in on me.

I can’t seem to access voice memo transcriptions, anyone know anything about that? definitely one of my most-looked-forward-to features. my closest friends and I will send 5+ minute messages to each other after days of not texting; it’ll make things so much easier.

oh, and search filtering is YEARS overdue. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wanted to find a message within a conversation and been unable to because…well, my texting language is not particularly varied. 😅 they solved that in a snap. overdue, nothing revolutionary, still really glad they added it.

now to get on @Theyayarealiving 🎗️’s level and get all those Craig stickers in my collection. they’ve gotta make sticker packs easier to download than they are right now (i.e., make it so someone can compress a selection of their stickers, upload it to the Internet, and have anyone download it as they please)—but that’s me being a dreamer as far as Apple’s control over things through the App Store goes, lmao
 
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LCPepper said:
What about allowing the microphone next to the text field to be a voice message (again?) like most other platforms.

It makes sense there, but now we’ve got two icons providing the same function with one causing confusion and hiding a common feature in a menu buried out of the way!

Unless this has changed in the betas? I haven’t tried them.
Click to expand...
I’ll bite as a voice memo enthusiast and say this is one gripe of mine—the way they swapped dictation and voice memos around somewhat meaninglessly. and once you’ve recorded a voice memo, the dictation button in the Messages field itself turns into a voice memo button…? seems like they’re tryna have iOS be “smart” about when you wanna do voice memos and when you wanna do dictation. I would be happy to see it as a toggle in Messages settings.
 
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mburkhard said:
All pretty meaningless unless Apple finally starts to add support for RCS. The reason is simple, in my country no one uses iMessage, even if the iPhone density is rather high. People just use WhatsApp.
So without Apple finally adding RCS to iMessage I'll be forced to use rubbish WhatsApp forever... well thank you, Tim Apple, you make me continue to support the Zuck, even if I don't want to! And no, obviously I cannot get all my friends and colleagues to buy an iPhone, how silly of you to think that would be the result of denying us RCS.
Click to expand...
no one wants RCS just use whatsapp/telegram/signal like everyone else, it will be funny when google gets bored and drops their version of it lol, i bet you a load of americans disagree with this post because they stuck in their ways.
 
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dmylrea said:
I'm guessing you want your work calls and texts forwarded to your personal phone? Does your work allow that and if so, why did they give you a work phone in the first place?
Click to expand...

Work does allow that, and it’s great. It’s Apple and the phone carriers who don’t allow that, and that’s not great…
 
mburkhard said:
Oh I think you're right! However, if RCS is supported I can tell people reach me via iMessage or RCS, so then it's their problem how to reach me. But as long as I can't have RCS on my iPhone I have to give people SOME way to send me text, so I'm forced to use WhatsApp.

It's just silly really. I know in the US it's very common for people to use iMessage, so for most iPhone users it might be perfectly fine to just stick with that. But that's impossible in Europe. Why can't Apple admit that outside of the US iMessage is simply not a popular thing, and therefore offer us an open STANDARD as an alternative. You know, like we used to have in the past with mail, fax and e-mail and SMS. We could simply message anyone without caring about any corporate garbage behind that.
I'd love to go back to that kind of simplicity. I'm so sick of this proprietary message formats. Seriously who wants this, except the CEOs of Apple and Facebook?
Click to expand...
I just want ONE place to check for messages. At least here in the US, I can count on everyone either sending me an iMessage or it defaulting to SMS if they're on an Android. Either way, it's in Messages and I don't have to dig around different apps -- especially some garbage like WhatsApp. RCS would just mean better features in chats with Android people, which is what Apple does NOT want apparently. Pretty frustrating.

And yeah, maybe people would keep using WhatsApp if RCS was adopted, but maybe also they would gradually be able to peek out of that particular Zuckerberg garden without having to use SMS.
 
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It’s hard to see how pushing all the options behind a menu benefits anyone. All that does it make it take longer to use any feature at all.
 
GtrDude said:
The swipe to reply only works if it's from another iPhone.
In the meantime Android can not only reply to anyone but also press an actual forward button to forward messages and images to someone else. Which is a much easier than to long press, then press copy, then find the other person, then paste.
So many extra taps necessary in iPhone in general to do the same things as in Android. Very annoying.
Click to expand...
Double tap to reply or react. Long press gives you a full menu and is too slow for normal conversation. You can definitely forward messages, but it’s behind “More”. It should be with the double tap to reply IMO.
 
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just curious. For those running iOS 17 PB1, on a scale from 1-10 (1=horrible, 10=release level quality) how would you rate:

1) the overall quality (i.e no bugs, no crashes, normal battery drain, etc)

2) app compatibility
 
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mburkhard said:
Oh I think you're right! However, if RCS is supported I can tell people reach me via iMessage or RCS, so then it's their problem how to reach me. But as long as I can't have RCS on my iPhone I have to give people SOME way to send me text, so I'm forced to use WhatsApp.

It's just silly really. I know in the US it's very common for people to use iMessage, so for most iPhone users it might be perfectly fine to just stick with that. But that's impossible in Europe. Why can't Apple admit that outside of the US iMessage is simply not a popular thing, and therefore offer us an open STANDARD as an alternative. You know, like we used to have in the past with mail, fax and e-mail and SMS. We could simply message anyone without caring about any corporate garbage behind that.
I'd love to go back to that kind of simplicity. I'm so sick of this proprietary message formats. Seriously who wants this, except the CEOs of Apple and Facebook?
Click to expand...
I understand your position. I too have been trying to get away from WhatsApp for years. The problem is that, even with RCS, all those other people still use WhatsApp. So any group chat for school or sports, is not going to be using RCS, as people continue to use WhatsApp. Yes, the technology for group text messaging currently isn't there. But if it were there today, people would still continue to use WhatsApp because that is what they have been using for years. It's the path of least resistance, unfortunately.
 
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