How to add cool animated effects to your iMessages

It’s easy to add a touch of style to your texts with cool effects in iMessage. We will show you all the ways you can use them. Using iMessage on your iPhone allows you to do more than just send text messages. Some of the coolest features of iMessage are the animated effects that make texting more fun.

You may have come across these effects when congratulating a friend, for example, only to see your screen fill with colorful balloons. iMessage has many more of these effects in stock. And in this article, we’ll show you how to unlock their colorful potential.

Learn about the effects of iMessage

You can’t add effects to every message you send from the Messages app, only iMessages. These are the blue messages you can send to other people using Apple devices. Green messages are standard SMS to which you cannot add effects.

There are two ways to add effects to an iMessage. The first method is to manually choose your effect and the second method is to let your iPhone suggest effects based on keywords or phrases you used.

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How to manually add effects to your iMessages

To manually add cool effects to your iMessage, open the app Messages and type the text. Then, long press on the arrow blue that you usually use to send a message.

You will see a screen appear with two categories of effects that you can choose from: Bubble and Effects screen. Bubble effects affect only the blue text bubble, while screen effects take up the entire screen. In Bubble you can choose between:

• Slam: makes your text slam on the screen, creating a 3D effect that shakes all the elements on the screen for a few seconds.
• Strong: makes the text bubble sway and expand before returning to its normal size.
• Delicate: a subtle effect that momentarily reduces the message to a smaller size, before returning to its normal size.
• Invisible ink: covers the message in the text bubble with a grainy blur. You have to tap or swipe the message to reveal it.

In Screen, you can choose between:

• Echo: floods the screen with duplicates of your message that swirl for a few seconds.
• Spotlight: highlights the message with a temporary spotlight and darkens the rest of the screen.
• Balloons: send your message with a bunch of multicolored balloons.
• Confetti: send your message with an explosion of confetti falling on the screen.
• Love: adds a large inflatable red heart with your message written on it.
• Laser: create the effect that your message shoots colored lasers on the screen while playing a funky beat.
• Fireworks: blanks the screen for a few seconds to display colored fireworks accompanied by vibrations.
• Celebration: this also darkens the screen to display a cascade of golden sparkles.

Swipe right to preview each effect. Tap the blue arrow Send when you decide which one to use, or tap the X gray to exit the Effect menu.

The effects will only play once, but you should see an icon Replay below an animated message, which you can tap to watch the effect again.

How to use keywords to trigger iMessage effects

The Messages app automatically adds some of these effects to your iMessages when you type and send certain words. This is definitely an easier way to make text messages more fun, mainly because it has an element of spontaneity.

Here are some common keywords and the effects they cause:

• Happy birthday: activate the Balloons effect.
• Congratulations: activates the Confetti effect.
• Happy New Year: activates the Fireworks effect. (In some regions, variations like “Happy Chinese New Year” or “Happy Lunar New Year” trigger the Celebration effect instead.)
• Pew Pew: activates the laser effect.

Another great thing is that these trigger words work in multiple languages, including English, Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Thai and Urdu. .

When you type any of the above sentences in that language, you will get an interesting effect in response.

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IMessage effects not working on your iPhone?

If your iPhone doesn’t play these animated effects for your iMessages, you may have disabled autoplay for message effects.

To edit it, open Settings, then tap Accessibility and activate the slider Autoplay message effects.

Do more with iMessage

The cool thing with iMessage animated effects is that you can add them to any iMessage text content – emoji, Memoji, GIF, images, handwritten messages, you name it. As long as it can be sent in an iMessage, you can spice it up with an effect.