Messages, Maps, and Music
Communicate, navigate and, um, party till late with Big Sur’s enhanced apps
RATHER THAN UPDATE macOS’ Messages app, Apple has effectively brought the iPadOS version to Big Sur, and it looks and feels a lot more like the mobile versions.
Animojis, which respond to your facial expressions, aren’t possible on current Macs, but Big Sur intriguingly contains support for the required depth–sensing Face ID camera. For now, you can design your own Memoji and apply it to messages as a choice of stickers with appropriate expressions, send messages with effects like balloons and confetti, and use “invisible ink” that appears blurred until the recipient swipes over it.
You can also now pin up to nine conversations to the top of the list in the left sidebar so they’re not displaced by random texts. Rather than the last message in each thread, they just show an avatar; for group chats, you can select a photo, emoji, or Memoji. This is then circled by mini avatars showing the most recent senders, so you can keep track of multiple conversations at a glance. Group chats are also facilitated by the new ability to reply directly to a message within a conversation. Everything syncs, so you can keep up with conversations on any of your Apple devices. To recall what’s been said, searching within Messages benefits from the new Spotlight enhancements, organizing your results for quick access.
All of this is no doubt intended to keep iMessage relevant in the age of Slack. The catch is that only Mac, iPhone and iPad users are invited. As before, you can send and receive SMS (green bubble) texts on Mac as long as you have an iPhone associated with the same Apple ID: go to Settings > Messages on your iPhone, tap Text Messages Forwarding, turn on the switch for your Mac, and enter the code to complete authentication. But Messages’ advanced features only work via iMessage (blue bubble) between Apple users.