What it is
Phone → Messages lets you have one-to-one chats. You can send text, stickers and voice notes, and reply to, react to, edit, delete or forward messages. Chats can also include cards for things like money sent, food gifts, bail requests, group invites, stadium tickets, court notices, bills, convoy calls and shared room designs.
How to use Messages
- Open Phone → Messages and choose a chat to read or send a message.
- To act on a message, tap or hold it. Choose a reaction or Reply, Copy, Forward, Edit, Delete for me or Delete for everyone. You can also swipe right on a message to reply.
- To record a voice note, hold the mic button. Slide left to cancel or up to lock the recording. In a private chat, ask 🎤 Can I send you voice notes? first; the other person must agree. You don't need to ask in chats with partners, family or groups.
- To filter your chat list, choose All, Unread (N) or Read at the top.
- To manage a chat, open its ⋯ menu. You can pin it, clear or delete it, allow or stop voice notes, report or block the person, ask to be their Bae, add them as family, request money, buy them food or hire them.
- To unblock someone, open your chat with them and tap Unblock.
- To control who can start a chat with you, go to Settings and choose Only friends. Friends include people you follow, your baes and people you've written to.
- To open a shared Vbook or Vgram post, tap its link in a message. If the link is to a comment, that comment opens selected.
Rules & numbers
- Messages can be up to 400 characters. Chats show 80 messages at a time; scroll up to see older messages.
- You can edit your own messages within 15 minutes. Edited messages show “Edited”.
- Delete for me hides a message only on your phone. Delete for everyone shows “🚫 Message deleted” to both people.
- You can forward a message to up to 5 chats at once.
- Voice notes can be 0.7 seconds to 2 minutes long. Voice files expire after 90 days.
- You can ask each person for voice-note permission once a day.
- A message, wave, invite, date or treat from someone you haven't written to goes to Message requests. You can reply to move it into your chats, or delete it. The sender isn't told when you delete it.
- If you set Only friends, people outside your friends list see “@name only takes messages from friends 🔒”.
- Chats appear newest first, below your pinned chats. You can pin up to 5 chats.
- The corner envelope counts unread chats and group messages, but not message requests. Push notifications are sent only when you're not in the game, at most one every 30 seconds per sender.
- At a venue, talking out loud allows 80 characters, up to 15 messages a minute. House chat at a party allows 200 characters, up to 20 messages a minute.
Tips
- Message requests don't make a chime, badge or push notification.
- If a message doesn't send, try again.
- Block someone who is bothering you. To limit who can start chats, choose Only friends in Settings.