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Apple’s Tapbacks in Messages Get a Fun Update in iOS 18

Apple’s Tapbacks in Messages Get a Fun Update in iOS 18

Apple has released iOS 18 to the general public on September 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 Series, Apple Watch Series 10 And more info at his September event. The update brings a bunch of new features to your iPhone, like the ability to customize lock screens, schedule messages to send later, and more. One cool new feature in the beta that will make your texting more fun is the ability to use more Tapbacks, Apple’s version of Reactions. With iOS 18, you can react to messages using all your emoji and stickers.

CNET Tech Tips CNET Tech Tips

Before iOS 18, there were only six Tapback options: a heart, a thumbs up or down, a “Haha,” exclamation points, or a question mark. Some people might be confused or irritated when they see someone react to their message with one of these emojis. For example, some people think the thumbs-up emoji is passive-aggressive. With iOS 18, you can use any emoji or sticker on your iPhone to react to messages, giving you more ways to communicate your feelings.

Learn more: Everything you need to know about iOS 18

Here’s how you can use all your emojis and stickers to react to texts in Messages.

How to Use All Emojis for Tapbacks

1. Open Messages.
2. Go to the right chat.
3. Long press on a message.

A picture of a sleeping brown and white dog A picture of a sleeping brown and white dog

The dog emoji seems like a good choice here.

Apple/CNET screenshot

In the Tapbacks bubble above the message, scroll right to see a handful of emojis to use. If you don’t see the right emoji or want to use a sticker, tap the gray smiley face on the far right of the menu to bring up your emoji keyboard. You can scroll through the emojis or use the search function to find the emoji you want to use.

You can also tap the sticker icon (the folded circle) to the left of the emoji keyboard to access your preset and custom stickers. That means you can react to someone’s message with a sticker of your pet if you want. And who doesn’t want to see more pets?

To learn more, here’s how to decipher all emoji. You can also check out my iOS 18 ReviewOUR iOS 18 Cheat Sheet And Everything Apple Announced at Its September Event.

Check this out: See everything announced at Apple’s iPhone 16 event