September 2025
Beginner
295 pages
7h 2m
English
Content preview from Take Control of FaceTime and Messages, 4th Edition
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Messages Basics
The Messages app allows sending and receiving messages in what Apple terms conversations with one other person or in groups. Apple provides lots of tools and extras to enrich how you send and receive text, share photos and links, and receive notifications about replies.
The Messages app consolidates Apple’s iMessage, industry-standard phone network messages (text and rich multimedia messages, or SMS and MMS), and Google-backed Rich Communication Services (RCS) messages starting in September 2024 into a single interface across all your devices. You can opt to receive messages and send them across all your iPhone-linked phone numbers and iCloud-connected email addresses (Figure 54).
Let’s get started by sending messages.