September 2025
Beginner
295 pages
7h 2m
English
Content preview from Take Control of FaceTime and Messages, 4th Edition
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Extend Messages
Apple sometimes treats the Messages app like a five-pound sack into which they need to cram another five pounds of stuff every time there’s a new idea. The integration isn’t perfect: Messages had a couple of straightforward purposes, and now it has many. Many people have used Messages for years without even knowing that some of these extras exist.
This chapter looks at the most significant aspects of Messages that extend its basic purpose. These features all have platform and version requirements that I thought I’d centralize up top for clarity:
Polls and backgrounds: iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe, or watchOS 26
Apple Cash: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
Live Translation: An iPhone, iPad, or Mac with Apple Intelligence enabled ...