How to Use Your Favorite Emoji to React to Texts in iOS 18

Not a fan of the generic iOS message reactions? You can now react to messages with any emoji, as well as any custom stickers you’ve made, with iOS 18.

Apple released iOS 18 to the general public in September, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its “Glowtime” event. The update brought loads of new features to your iPhone, like the ability to customize lock screens, schedule messages to send later and more. And one exciting new feature in the update that will make your texts more fun is the ability to use more Tapbacks — Apple’s version of Reactions. With iOS 18, you can use all your emoji, and even your stickers, to react to messages.

Before iOS 18, there were only six Tapback options: a heart, thumbs up or down, a “Haha,” exclamation points or a question mark. Some people might be confused or irritated when they see someone react to their message with one of these. For instance, some folks feel the thumbs-up emoji is passive-aggressive. With iOS 18, you can use any emoji or sticker on your iPhone to react to messages, giving you more avenues to communicate your feelings.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18

Here’s how you can use all your emoji and stickers to react to texts in Messages.

How to use all emoji for Tapbacks

1. Open Messages.
2. Tap into the right chat.
3. Long-press on a message.

In the Tapbacks bubble above the message, scroll to the right to show a handful of emoji to use. If you don’t see the right emoji, or you want to use a sticker, tap the gray smiley to the far-right of the menu to pull up your emoji keyboard. You can scroll through the emoji or use the search function to find the emoji you want to use.

You can also tap the sticker icon — the folded-over circle — near the left side of the emoji keyboard to access your premade and custom-made stickers. That means you can react to someone’s message with a sticker of your pet if you want to, and who doesn’t want to see more pets?

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For more on iOS 18, here’s everything you need to know about iOS 18.1, my iOS 18 review and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what iOS 18.2 could bring to your iPhone soon.