Apple's Tapbacks in Messages Get a Fun Update in iOS 18

Apple released iOS 18 to the general public on Sept. 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its September event. The update brings loads of new features to your iPhone, like the ability 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.

Here’s how you can use all your emoji and stickers to react to texts in Messages.

How to use all emoji for Tapbacks

1. Open Messages.
2. Tap into the right chat.
3. Long-press on a message.

A picture of a sleepy brown and white dog — The dog emoji seems like a good choice here.

Apple/Screenshot by CNET

In the Tapbacks bubble above the message, scroll to the right to show a handful of emoji to use. If you don’t see the right emoji, or you want to use a sticker, tap the gray smiley to the far-right of the menu to pull up your emoji keyboard. 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?

For more, here’s how to decipher all the emoji. You can also check out my iOS 18 review, our iOS 18 cheat sheet and everything Apple announced at its September event.