Apple’s Messages app has some catching up to do with how you catch up on group chats

Zac Hall | Dec 21 2021 - 11:09 am PT

Apple’s Messages app has greatly improved group iMessage in recent years, but there’s one missing feature that Slack gets right. Addressing this and other creative recommendations in iOS 16 next year would be extremely well received.

Group iMessage maturity

Apple gets so many features with group messaging right. Some of the fundamentals include:

Muting especially chatty group chats
Leaving group chats entirely
Personalizing group chats with names and images
Support for @mentions and inline replies

iMessage is so much better for group chats than basic SMS for these reasons – get stuck in a green bubble group chat, and you lack many of the controls and features that iMessage offers.

Now, where were we?

Here’s the thing – Apple’s current implementation of group iMessage works too much like one-on-one messaging in how it handles new messages.

If someone messages you individually so much that you have to scroll back to recall where the conversation left off for you, that’s just spamming on the sender’s part. This isn’t the case for group messaging; it’s very possible for conversation among other people in the chat to progress far beyond where you left off.

Slack and other messaging apps handle this well because they were designed from the start for making group chats manageable. When you return to a channel, Slack can recall where you left off, which allows you to catch up on new messages chronologically, in the order they were sent.

The situation on Apple’s Messages app is not as polished yet.

The app puts you at the most recent message sent in the group chat, which means that to catch yourself up, you are required to load the history of messages already sent to find where you left off. You’re also forced back to the bottom of the chat when a new message comes if you’re reading what you missed.

A better way

This week, I found myself reading group chats in reverse to avoid the papercut feeling of finding the starting point and being pulled back to the finish line. I admit it can be entertaining sometimes to work backwards and find out how a conversation unfolded, but it’s not the best experience for comprehending what was actually said.

I’m hoping iOS 16 considers this and enhances the experience with adjustments that address these shortcomings. I would love to pick up where I left off in group chats, and notification banners would be preferred to being pulled to the bottom of an active discussion. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments and on Twitter!