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Apple’s new Messages features are great, but the notifications are overwhelming
Apple’s Messages app may have lost the global messaging wars, but in many countries—including the U.S.—it’s still an incredibly popular way of communicating. That’s why Apple keeps upgrading it.
This fall’s Messages updates are some of the biggest ever, with the addition of RCS messaging, true emoji and sticker tapbacks, styled and animated text, Send Later, and support for texts via satellite.
But as the people in my Messages group chats all upgraded to iOS 18 and started taking advantage of some of these new features, it all became too much for me. All these new features are good, yes, but they can also be spectacularly distracting. This is why Apple’s next big step in Messages needs to be to give users the power to control when and how we’re interrupted in ways far beyond what’s available today.