What's New with Messages in iOS 14?! Overhauled Group Chat!Posted by Mahler Clemensen on May 27th, 2021 [ Music ] welcome everybody. It is Andrew here from Apple Insider. Taking a look at messages within iOS 14 Apple has continued to push messages forward over the last few big OS releases and iOS 14 is no different, with a huge pile of new features to check out starting with pin conversation. Pin conversations go right to the top of your messages, making them easy to keep track of, as usual, even swipe to the left to mute or delete a conversation. But now, if you moved to the right, you can pin that conversation up to nine conversations can be pin here at the top of the messages app. If weblink look quickly at grouped messages now, these group conversations are also radically different. If we jump into this one with two people with Wes and Jessie, I can actually go in and see all their photos. But here I can change the name and the photo of this group conversation. Yes, before you could add a group name, but in this new interface you cannot only add that group name, but in emoji a photo and an emoji whatever you want to do to set for the kind of group logo in this case we're gon na go with. Maybe a guitar and we're gon na adjust the color to maybe there's light bluish gray that'll go ahead and set our group name in this case. We'Re just gon na make it team AppleInsider. The photo is the largest part there in the center with everyone else's faces around the outside and those that are most vocal or frequent in a group. Their photos will be larger around the outside. If we go back, you can also see how whether you're looking at a group conversation or a single conversation, they'll actually have little speech bubbles coming out, letting you know when somebody talked or who that person is. If it's that group combo now moving back to that group combo, because it really is a lot to talk about in these group conversations, you can get messy fast and parts of conversations can get left behind, but not with iOS 14. Now we have a bunch of new features, including mentions and inline replies, so you can see a lot of that going on here. In my conversation with West and Jesse about the new iOS 14 Vedas like here, that message is actually replied to a really old message. So have to scroll up quite a bit to see the original message keep going way up here towards the top boom. This was sent by Jesse quite a while ago, and I first replied he unless it replies because that kind of bubble and that arrow to go with it. And then we had a whole conversation here back to that original message. So you can really see kind of how they are all pulled together, but sometimes that can still be confusing, so you actually can tap in and views that entire nested reply chain, just in one view, makes it really easy to see all of those replies that one And not gon na confuse with the rest of the conversation. Of course, these threaded replies aren't easy to do something to hold out on a message, or in this case a picture and tap on reply. It'Ll go ahead and let me reply directly to that message. Photo Jeff whatever it may be. We can go ahead and put our comment, our message, our reply right there and tap send and now it's nested in there. So if we go back to the main screen, you'll see, even though that sticker is way up there, I have it small or grayed out there with my applied to it and I tap on that one apply it'll bring up that entire chain, the entire threaded view Of messages, additionally, you can mention people, so you can do this just by typing their name and then tap it on the little bubble. That appears so in this case I'm gon na reply back to West, letting him know that I, like the stickers and when it comes up, I can tap on his name. It says West Hillyard tap on that it lets. You know with a little animation that he was tagged in there and sent, and what that means is you'll actually get a notification that he was mentioned like right here. I have the conversation muted, but I still got an alert that Wes Hilliard mentioned me. In my conversation with Jessie and him in here, you can see, even though it is on do not disturb. I stole that notification icon there on the left hand, side. Aside from all those changes to group conversations, we are also seeing changes coming to Kenneth, the an emoji or the meme og characters, as well as the me emoji stickers, mildly disappointing. Is we don't have any new an emoji characters, so all the same characters that were here before are still here. So there are no new an emoji characters, but me emoji definitely got some improvements. Apple continues to push the meme og character, creation, further, making it more diverse and more emotive in the characters that you create. There are several new hairstyles with the updated emoji, including man, bun top knot and a simple side part. There have been minor changes across other various aspects of the meme, og character creation, just some small tweaks and a few little enhancements here in there, but under head. We actually updates to age. Now there are nine ages that you can go between from baby-faced a little bit older to anywhere in between. So those are all new options now under head. We have several new options for hairstyles. There are actually 16 new. Sorry, head styles head where they're actually, sixteen new styles, including cyclist, helmet, the nurse's cap, swim cap, there's the mortarboard graduation hat. Obviously, there's a ton in here. I don't even know all the names for them for face coverings. Those are new this year you can actually add face coverings and change the color of those masks, who seems particularly relevant in these corona virus pandemic times, and then we have three new meme og stickers on top of all those new customization options, so these include fist Bump a hug and a blush, as you can see, between these three new ones, that Apple has just added and all the previous one that Apple's been continuing to add over time with even minor iOS updates. It'S really cool to see, you'll, be able to take and create your own character and then have all these different characters to send back, and here you can see the actual me emoji or an emoji, but everyone I call them faces are more expressive than ever. They remapped a lot of the muscles to make them more responsive and more charismatic, as you kind of move your face around so they're definitely more expressive than they have been in the past. That really covers it. Those are all the new changes and features coming to iOS messages and well, you guys know that these changes are not just here on iPhone we're seeing these over on iPad and even on the Mac. The Mac has finally a much much much better messages app. That includes all these features for the most part, including the stickers, are now there and you can send a message effects just a lot going on. Let me know what you guys think over on Twitter at Andrew underscore OSU, hey everyone. Did you guys like that? Video? 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