We all enjoy using iMessage – and we usually brag about using it with our friends, family, and loved ones. Even though iMessage has improved and grown drastically since its initial launch, there are still multiple ways Apple can improve it with iOS 15 this year.
With iOS 14, the company finally introduced the threaded reply feature on iMessage, brought pinned conversations, and gave the app some great improvements but with iOS 15, Apple needs to do more.
For example, have you ever tried to scroll up your old messages on iMessage? It’s nearly impossible. You can have gigabytes of data there that you’ll probably not be able to access even if you know exactly the words you wrote a few years ago.
And I’m not the only one who thinks Apple should do something. There are several forum discussions about being able to scroll to the beginning of an iMessage chat on the web. Spencer Dailey, on the Key Discussions blog, wrote about this issue while trying to find old messages with his wife:
Searching for particular iMessages is not useful because it’s not reliable when searching for iMessages that are 2+ years old. The results miss the broader context of the conversation or, in my case, old messages simply don’t show up in search. My wife and I know the text of our earliest messages (we have a screenshot of our first 5 or so messages), and search simply does not return them. But also, what if you forget the exact phrasing of an old message, you’re doubly out of luck. (And no, I have never toggled the “Auto Delete Old Conversations”, which is an inappropriate choice to present users in the first place.
Here, it doesn’t matter whether he has 64GB of storage on his iPhone or over 512GB. The same applies if the messages are stored on iCloud.
And it’s just not that. The experience of using iMessage on the Mac isn’t Apple-like. It always takes longer to synchronize messages, it never understands when a group changes its name or its photo, and it’s difficult to search for images shared a few weeks ago.
Dailey reminded me about the things I hate the most while using iMessage:
Yesterday I tried to scroll to the “top” of my iMessages that were from and to my wife. After just a few minutes, my computer with 16GB of RAM started “beach balling” and the app froze before I could even get to messages from 6 months ago. Meanwhile, my wife tried to access our earliest messages on her iPhone 8 Plus and it was even sadder: after over 45 minutes of scrolling, she got within a year of the conversation’s beginning and then the iMessages app crashed on her.
Top features for iMessage on iOS 15
Although having new Memoji customization is always great, there are several things Apple should do to improve iMessage. Here are a few ideas for iOS 15:
- Delete recently sent messages;
- Improve the reply-thread function;
- Fix Mac integration with other devices – no more doubled groups;
- Let users store all the messages they have – and let them access the messages;
- Let a user send a link then show the preview rather than wait for the preview to show up and then sending the message.
In this article, I don’t even want to compare iMessage with WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. I think we’ve let Apple have these “few” problems over the years with iMessage because is way more practical to just text someone rather than opening any other app, but it’s time for some of these issues to be fixed.
What do you think Apple should add to iMessage? Do you have the same issues? Share in the comment section down below.
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