When you receive a message in the Messages app, you’re probably quite familiar with the concept of tapping and holding to add one of those six pre-selected Tapback options to your message. Well, in iOS 18, they’ve had a slight refresh, but more excitingly, you can now swipe sideways on that reactions bar! This allows you to add any emoji and any sticker to your message.

You’ll find there are a few recommended emojis on that Tapback bar, but of course, you can press the emoji button here, and that will open up the whole Emoji picker. What’s really clever here is that you’re not just limited to emojis. If I leave a new Tapback and go to the emoji button, I can actually access all of my stickers as well. That means I can use any of my Memoji stickers to add a personal response to the message in the form of my own customised emoji.

If your recipient is using iOS 18 or later, they’ll see this appear like a normal Tapback. If they haven’t updated yet, they’ll see your emoji come through as a sticker instead.

Now that iOS 18 has been released, there are so many more things your phone can do that it simply couldn’t do before. I spent my summer playing with iOS 18, and I’ve made a ton of QuickTip videos on my channel down below. But excitingly, I’ve also written my first eBook! I’ve called it 100 QuickTips for iOS 18, and if you follow the link below, I promise you’ll find things that you never knew your phone could do now that you’ve updated to iOS 18. I’ll see you next time!