By Conner Carey on Tue, 08/29/2017
In the Messages app on the iPhone, you can create group messages to keep in contact with multiple people simultaneously. You can even hold group chats with contacts that don’t use an iPhone—you just won’t be able to add anyone to a group unless it’s comprised of all iPhone users with iMessage enabled. Group messages can easily get out of hand when there are lots of people in one, but they’re fantastic for sharing information that multiple people need to know in a single message. Here’s how to create group messages on iPhone.
Related: How to Search Message History on iPhone: iMessage, Facebook, and Whatsapp
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How to Create Group Messages on the iPhone
If for any reason you haven’t been able to send a group message before, make sure Group Messaging is on: open Settings, tap Messages, and toggle Group Messaging on. With your Settings in order, here's how to start a group message.
- To start a group message, open the Messages app.
- Tap the new message icon in the upper right corner.
- Enter the names of the friends you want to add. Alternatively, you can tap the blue plus sign to add another, and select the contact you want to add.
- Type your message and tap send. You’ve started a group message!
- To add an additional contact to the group message, open the group message thread and tap the blue ‘i’ in the upper right corner.
- Select Add Contact. Choose the person from your Contacts list and press Done.
Remember that you will only be able to add people to a group if all the users are on iOS and using iMessage. For example, if you’re in a group of three and one of those users is using SMS text messages or is an Android user, you won’t be able to add another friend. You’ll simply need to create a new group message.
Removing someone from a group message is slightly different—you can only remove people from an all iMessage group of three or more people (not including yourself). To do so, tap the blue ‘i’ and swipe left on the person’s name. Anyone in an all iMessage group can remove someone, but this won’t work if anyone in that group is not using iMessage. However, you can leave the conversation regardless of whether everyone is using iMessage or not. But you can only leave a group message that has three or more people, not including yourself.
