This article explains what you can do to fix when iMessage effects do not work on your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max. iMessage effects are pretty powerful. These effects include text effects, bubble effects, full-screen animations, camera effects, Memoji stickers with bubble or full-screen effects, and handwritten messages.
1. Please ensure that you are sending an iMessage. To send message effects, you need iMessage. iMessages appear in blue text bubbles, unlike the green text message bubbles.
Furthermore, iMessage is Apple’s messaging service that you can use to send and receive text messages in the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. With people on non-Apple devices, such as Android users, Messages uses RCS or SMS/MMS instead, and those messages appear in green bubbles. So you cannot send iMessage effects to Android users.
2. Simply restart your iPhone 18 Pro: simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider. You can also go to Settings > General, scroll down, then tap Shut Down and drag the slider. Then press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.
3. Make sure that your iPhone 18 Pro is running the latest iOS software. You can check this by going to Settings > General > Software Update. If not, you may want to update your iOS software version.
4. Can you not receive iMessage effects on your iPhone 18 Pro? The first thing you should check is if you have Reduce Motion on. Turning Reduce Motion on will disable various effects. Here is how you can check this. Please note that you want this option off if you want iMessage effects to work:
- On your iPhone, tap Settings > Accessibility
- Select Motion
- And disable Reduce Motion
- There is another option here called Auto-Play Message Effects. Keep it on if you want effects to play automatically: when on, the Messages app automatically plays full-screen effects. If you turn this setting off, you can still manually play effects by tapping Replay below the message bubble.
5. Are you still having issues? Try disabling and re-enabling iMessage. Here is how:
- On your iPhone 18 Pro, tap Settings, then tap Apps
- Tap Messages
- Turn off iMessage, then restart your iPhone.
- And enable iMessage.
If you see āWaiting for activationā when you turn iMessage back on, it might take up to 24 hours for your carrier to verify your phone number with Apple.
6. Message effects are still not displaying? Some users have said that turning Airplane Mode on and then off again fixed this for them. You can access this setting by going to Settings > Airplane Mode. Wait five seconds between turning Airplane Mode on and off.
7. Reset All Settings by going to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings. Please note that doing so will not erase your personal data like your photos etc. It will however erase your settings like display, network, etc. They will be restored to factory defaults.
