If you send “Congratulations” or “Happy Birthday” to someone who uses Messages on an iPhone, they will get a little surprise: a rain of confetti or a few festive balloons rain or float on their screen along with your words. It’s a nice little trick embedded in the messaging platform – but it’s also something you can trigger yourself for every message you send.
To send a text with improved animation effects, long press the blue arrow key while sending a text. This will open a panel called “Send with Effect” which will allow you to send your texts with additional pizzaz.
There are two different ways to send your texts this way and you can choose how you want to do it at the top: balloon or screen. The bubble effect – which has been around for a while and which you’ve probably used before – changes how your text message appears on the recipient’s phone as soon as you choose from a handful of options:
- Slam: The text of your message seems to pop up on the screen
- According to: The text appears to the reader to burst
- Gently: The text appears small and slowly grows to normal size
- Invisible ink: The message appears as a cloud of points that the recipient must touch to reveal it. (The message is covered up again after you read it – a useful trick if you don’t want people to read over your shoulder.)
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But the other section that you might not notice if you don’t know it’s there is is screenthat complements your text message with a full screen effect. Tap on it to review your options. However, unlike the bubble area, you have to swipe from left to right to select the effect:
- Echo: Duplicates your text message and sends it around the screen. (This is especially fun if you have a few emojis, but if you use more than four, they will appear on a line rather than as individual characters.)
- Headlights: Dims the screen and highlights your text.
- Balloons: Accompany every text message with a cloud of balloons.
- Confetti: Sends a rain of confetti with your text.
- Love: Sends a huge heart with your text.
- Laser: Next to your text, send a little laser show.
- Fireworks: Fireworks explode while your message is being delivered
- Celebration: This shoots a celebratory shower of sparks from one corner of the screen.
In general, these effects don’t stack up – with the exception of Echo, which can replicate, and the Bubble effects, in a cloud of messages that cover the entire screen. First select your bubble effect, then swipe to the screen and select “Echo”. (At this point in time, layering doesn’t work with other screen effects like Love or Celebration).
The effects are a nice way to enhance your texts (and you can tap under any text to play it back). If they don’t appear – or if you don’t want them to appear – you can toggle them on or off in below Settings> Accessibility> AutoPlay Message Effects. Apple also lets you send regular text messages with these effects, although they’re only visible to other message users.
