When you’re writing a message in the Messages app, quite often I find that I want to emphasise part of what I’m saying by making it bold or perhaps italic, but up until now, you haven’t been able to do that. Well, in iOS 18, that’s changed!

If I double tap to highlight a word in the message, I can then press this Text Effects button here. At the top, I’ve got options for Bold, Italic, Underline, and Strikethrough. This works exactly like you’d expect it to, and I can choose multiple formatting styles or apply them to multiple words in a single message. When I press Send, my newly formatted message will appear on my recipient’s device as long as they’re running iOS 18 or later. If they haven’t updated yet, they’ll just see the plain text version you would have had before the update.

And this is just one of many new things in the Messages app! 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!