5 Awesome iMessage Tricks in iOS 8

The Messages app in iOS 8 comes with a handful of new features, but if you’re not quite familiar with iOS 8 or the iPhone and iPad as a whole, you might not know that these cool new features exist. Here are five awesome iMessage tricks in iOS 8.

iMessage has always been rather bare-bones over the years, coming with a few neat features, but wasn’t really up to par with some of the third-party options like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc. However, with iOS 8, iMessage is finally a worthy competitor.

The Messages app on your iPhone or iPad is capable of doing so much more than just sending text messages back and forth. And while the app remains largely unchanged compared to iOS 7, the newly-added features that came with iOS 8 back in September allows iMessage to do a lot more with photos and videos, as well as even sending quick audio messages if your fingers aren’t quite up for a typing marathon.

Here are five useful iMessage tricks in iOS 8 that you’ll want to take advantage of right away.

Instantly Send a Photo or Video

In the past, taking a photo and sending it to someone in iMessage wasn’t exactly quick and to the point, but iOS 8 makes it a lot easier.

Instead, all you have to do is hold down on the camera icon and snap your photo. From there, it will instantly be sent to the recipient.

When you open up a conversation window, you should see a small camera icon to the left of the text box down at the bottom. Tap and hold on it to bring up a couple of options.

The two options show a camera icon above your finger and then a red circle to the right. Swiping up to the small camera icon and letting go will instantly take a photo and send it to the recipient. Swiping over to the red circle will automatically begin recording a video, and when you’re done recording, simply lift your finger up to automatically have it sent to the recipient.

Quickly Send a Photo from Your Camera Roll

What if you already took a photo and want to send it to someone in iMessage? That process is now easier than ever.

You can simply just tap on the camera icon to bring up the same options that used to appear in iOS 7, only this time you’ll also be greeted with your most recent photos and videos that you’ve taken, and you can scroll through them and select one that you want to send.

Instantly Send an Audio Message

In iOS 8, you can now send instant audio messages.

When you open up a conversation window in the Messages app, you should see a small microphone icon to the right of the text box. Tap and hold on it to start recording an audio message.

When you’re done recording it, lift up your finger and then you’ll have two options to choose from: deleting the audio message or sending it. The X icon will delete the message and the arrow pointing upwards will send it.

You can also tap and hold to record your message and then immediately swipe up to send it quickly. Or swipe left to delete the message.

Share Your Location

One awesome feature in iMessage in iOS 8 is kind of hidden, but it’s a feature that can come in handy when you’re out and about.

The Messages app allows you to share your location with a contact, which can be great for meeting up with someone without having to explain where you are or how they can get there.

Open up a conversation window with a contact and tap on Details. From there, you’ll see two location options: Share My Current Location and Share My Location.

Tapping on Share My Current Location will send your current location to your contact, but it’s a one-time instance, so if you move to another location, iMessage won’t keep updating the recipient with your new location.

This is where Share My Location comes in handy. Tapping on that option will bring up a few more options as far as how long you want to share your location. Select one and off you go!

Mute Notifications for Certain Contacts

Sometimes you just can’t be bothered with certain people that you regularly chat with. That’s why Do Not Disturb exists.

If you’re wanting to mute notifications for certain people, but want to make sure that you still receive notifications for important contacts, you can mute notifications for certain people. Just open up their conversation window, tap on Details, and then enable Do Not Disturb.

You’ll no longer receive text message notifications from that contact until you turn off Do Not Disturb for that person.