Apple released iOS 18’s sixth public beta on Aug. 29, a few days after the tech giant announced it would hold its iPhone launch event on Sept. 9. Developers and beta testers can use it to customize lock screens, schedule messages to send later and more. One exciting new feature in the beta that will make your texts more fun is the ability to use more Tapbacks — Apple’s version of Reactions. With iOS 18, you can react to messages using all your emoji and stickers.
Before iOS 18, there were only six Tapback options: a heart, thumbs up or down, a “Haha,” exclamation points, or a question mark. Some people might be confused or irritated when they see someone react to their message with one of these. For instance, some folks feel the thumbs-up emoji is passive-aggressive. With iOS 18 you can use any emoji or sticker on your iPhone to react to messages, giving you more avenues to communicate your feelings.
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I recommend downloading a beta only on something other than your primary device. Because this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, the update might be buggy and battery life may be short, and it’s best to keep those troubles on a secondary device. I downloaded the betas to my old iPhone XR to keep any issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Note that the beta is not the final version of iOS 18, so there could be more features to land on your iPhone when iOS 18 is released. Apple said iOS 18 would be released to the public this fall, but there’s no definitive date yet.
Here’s how you can use all your emoji and stickers to react to texts in Messages.
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How to use all emoji for Tapbacks
1. Open Messages.
2. Tap into the right chat.
3. Long-press on a message.
4. In the Tapbacks bubble above the message, scroll to the right and tap the smiley.
This will pull up your emoji keyboard across the bottom of your screen. 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-over circle — near the left side of the emoji keyboard to access your premade and custom-made stickers. That means you can react to someone’s message with a sticker of your pet if you want to — and who doesn’t want to see more pets?
Don’t forget, iOS 18 is still in beta so these features could be buggy or not work properly. There will likely be more betas before the OS is released to the public, so there’s plenty of time for Apple to address any issues. As of now, there’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.
For more, here’s how to decipher all the emoji. You can also check out my hands-on experience with the iOS 18 beta, our iOS 18 cheat sheet and what we might see at Apple’s September iPhone event.
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