iMessage in iOS 18 to bring animations and text effects to individual words—is rich text support coming?

Apple’s upcoming iOS 18 release is expected to be one of the iPhone’s biggest software updates ever. Today a new report highlights an enhancement set to be added to one of Apple’s most popular apps: Messages.

Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:

Apple plans to add a new text effects feature to the Messages app on iOS 18, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While it is already possible to send iMessages with bubble effects or full-screen effects, such as invisible ink or confetti, the text effects would allow you to add animations to individual words within a message.

It sounds like the new iMessage feature may work similarly to a rich text system, but with a lot more razzle-dazzle.

Just about every other first-party iPhone app that supports text input lets you modify that text, down to the individual word or letter, with rich text controls like bold, italics, and underline. Certain apps also support creating bulleted or numbered lists, or different headers or other content types.

Rich text support would be a welcome addition to iOS 18, but it’s interesting that this rumor mentions nothing about rich text and focuses instead on “text effects” that are comparable to the existing Bubble and Screen effects.

Text animations would be a new thing entirely, and it’d be interesting to see not only how they work, but also whether they make it to any of iOS 18’s other pre-installed apps like Notes or Mail.

9to5Mac’s Take

The way I read this rumor, Apple is planning a form of rich text support for Messages in iOS 18. Most likely, that will include not only the basics like bold, italics, and underline, but also some more exciting options.

The ability to animate individual words, highlight them, or otherwise make parts of your message pop sounds like a lot of fun. I’m excited to see what WWDC brings in just a few more days—June 10 can’t come soon enough.