iMessage effects: How to animate and format your text messages

iMessage effects can add much more meaning, emotion and fun to your texting. You can add bold, italics, underline and strikethrough text, just like a formatted document, and even choose from a bunch of cool, animated effects.

You can make congratulations more bombastic, to rejoice in someone’s finest moments. Or, you can use formatting and effects to convey sarcasm, stress and sorrow more clearly.

Keep reading below or watch our video.

How to use all the iMessage effects on your iPhone

Text messaging is incredibly prevalent these days — and can also be incredibly tricky. It’s all about achieving the proper tone. Just as choosing a certain emoji (or creating the perfect Genmoji) can change the mood of a message, using these iMessage effects can alter the way a text lands. Employed properly, they can make a happy message more exciting or lighten the tone of a text that the receiver otherwise might misconstrue.

In short, iMessage effects can add much more meaning, emotion and fun to your texting.

Note: These iMessage effects are available on iOS 18 or later, when you’re using iMessage in the Messages app — aka blue bubble texting with another owner of an Apple device. Apple developed these custom effects, so they don’t work on Android green-bubble texting via SMS or RCS. They work similarly on Macs.

Table of contents: How to use all the iMessage effects

1. Text formatting for bold, italics, underline and strikethrough
2. Animated word effects
3. Text bubble effects
4. Full-screen iMessage effects
5. More features in Messages

Text formatting for bold, italics, underline and strikethrough

In the toolbar above your iPhone’s keyboard, you’ll see a Text Effects button on the right. Tap on that to open the menu of options for formatting text.

Along the top, you’ll see the classic formatting options of bold, italicize, underline and strikethrough. Tap and drag to select the text you want to format; tap one or more of these options to apply the format you want.

On a Mac, you can use the standard ⌘B, ⌘I and ⌘U to apply these. Strikethrough is available in the Format menu in the menu bar, or in the context (right-click) menu.

Animated word effects

In the same Text Effects menu, below the classic options, you’ll see various animated text effects. They are: big, small, shake, nod, explode, ripple, bloom and every coffee fiend’s favorite — jitter.

You can apply these to your whole text message, or to specific words in it. You can even apply multiple effects to different words in the same message by selecting different words or portions. But, understandably, you can’t combine effects on the same selection — you can’t make words both big and small. That would be silly.

On a Mac, you can find these options in the Format menu in the menu bar — although they’re not as fun and animated as they are on iOS.

Text bubble effects

And it’s not just text you can alter. You can employ other animations and iMessage effects so you really send a message. After writing your text, tap and hold the Send button to bring up a special effects menu:

• Slam throws the message bubble down on the screen, with a poof of dust, like it’s being dropped on the table.
• Loud makes the message bubble grow and shake, to get their attention.
• Gentle makes the text shrink down, and slowly grow back in — as if it’s being whispered.
• Invisible Ink covers the message with static that the other person needs to swipe away to reveal.

Tap to select an effect, then tap the Send button to send the message with that effect. If you change your mind, tap × (Cancel Effect) to close the menu.

Full-screen iMessage effects

Apple also cooked up full-screen animations you can use when sending an iMessage. At the top of the screen, tap the Screen tab to try them out. Swipe left and right to browse through all the effects:

• Echo: Copies of the message echo across the screen, expanding and shrinking as they rise, swirl and disappear.
• Spotlight: The conversation darkens, then a bright spotlight illuminates your message as particles of dust flow through the white light.
• Balloons: Multicolored balloons float up from below.
• Confetti: Multicolored confetti cascades from above.
• Love: A red, heart-shaped balloon inflates from behind the message, then floats up and away.
• Lasers: Multicolored laser lights sweep across the screen, scanning up and down.
• Fireworks: Fireworks burst and fade over a black backdrop.
• Celebration: White light bursts from the top right corner, as sparks rain down the screen in a celebratory deluge.

Tap Send to send the message with the chosen effect, or tap × (Cancel Effect) to close the menu.

More advanced features in Messages