Your text reactions can be more expressive with this iOS 18 feature

I’m not a fan of the generic reactions to iOS messages called Tapbacks? The six original Tapbacks were a heart, thumbs up or down, “Haha”, exclamation points or a question mark. Some people might be confused or irritated of these reactions and some people feel the thumbs up emoji is passive-aggressive. But iOS 18 allows you to be more expressive and communicative by allowing you to use any emoticon or sticker on your iPhone to react to messages.

Apple released iOS 18 in September and the update brought many new features to your iPhone, such as the ability to customize lock screens and schedule messages to send later. An exciting new feature in the update that will make your texts more fun is the ability to use all of yours emoticons (and even your stickers) to react to messages.

Read more: Everything you need to know about iOS 18

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

How to use all emoticons for Tapbacks

1. Open up Messages.
2. Tap the correct chat.
3. Press a long message.

In the Tapbacks bubble above the message, scroll right to reveal a handful of emoticons to use. If you don’t see the correct emoticon or want to use a sticker, tap the gray smiley at the far right of the menu to pull up the emoticon keyboard. You can scroll through the emoji or use the search function to find the emoji you want to use.

You can also tap the sticker icon — the folded circle — near the left side of the emoji keyboard to access your pre-created and custom stickers. This 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?

For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.1 and ours iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check what your iPhone might come up with iOS 18.3.

Watch this: What to expect from Apple in 2025

04:23 a.m