Latest news with #texting
CNET
a day ago
- General
- CNET
Here's How to Turn Off Some Annoying iPhone Texting Features, Including Autocorrect
Texting is one of the easiest ways to stay in touch with friends and family, and if you can't find the right words to use in a text, you can use emoji instead. But some texting features on iPhone can be downright annoying and cause all kinds of headaches when trying to send a quick message. Some of the biggest texting annoyances include autocorrect and predictive texting. Autocorrect can cut down on the number of typos when you're typing, and predictive texting can make it easy to write a full message in a few quick taps. But when I use these features, more often than not they are correcting words I don't mean to be corrected or suggesting words I don't want to use. And others are equally annoyed by autocorrect and predictive text. Thankfully, you can easily turn these features off in a few quick steps. Here's how to making texting easier by turning off some of your iPhones messaging features. Turn inline predictive text off Inline predictive text was introduced in iOS 17 and is similar to predictive text, but it places the suggested text in the texting field in light gray. Apple wrote online that inline predictive text is meant to predict what you're going to write as you type, and if you hit space the predicted text would be added to your text. The feature doesn't always accurately predict what you were typing, so if you hit space, you might add the wrong text to your message. The gray text might also be distracting if you're trying to read what you're writing in real time. If you don't like inline predictive text, here's how to turn the feature off. 1. Open Settings. 2. Tap General. 3. Tap Keyboard. 4. Tap the switch next to Show Predictions Inline. Now, when you type a message, you won't run the risk of adding a word you don't intend to add. You'll still see predictive text, the suggested words and emoji, over your keyboard. Turn all predictive text off If you find all predictive text annoying, you can easily turn that off, too. Here's how: 1. Open Settings. 2. Tap General. 3. Tap Keyboard. 4. Tap the switch next to Predictive Text. Apple/Screenshot by CNET When you type a message now, you won't see a box over your keyboard with suggested words or emojis. Turning predictive text off also disables inline predictive text, so you won't see any suggestions whatsoever. You can type without interruption. Turn autocorrect off When Apple announced iOS 17, the company touted an improved autocorrect function. But some people might still be irritated by the feature and adjust autocorrected words. If you're sick of autocorrect, here's how to turn it off. 1. Open Settings. 2. Tap General. 3. Tap Keyboard. 4. Tap the switch next to Auto-Correction. Now when you type a message, your iPhone won't change words as you type them -- including swear words. However, you might see more spelling errors in your messages. If those errors pile up and you want autocorrect enabled again, just follow the above steps one more time. For more iOS news, here's all the features included in iOS 18.5 and iOS 18.4. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet and what we hope to see in iOS 19.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sex up the sexting! Why text messages are the hot new boom area in TV shows
In the final episode of Ted Lasso's second season, Ted sends a text to his ex-wife that reads simply: 'Knock, knock.' Nothing too unusual about that you might think, but what is strange is that it appears to be the very first message he's ever sent the mother of his son. Stranger still, she has never previously texted him either. The blank white space above and below their messages reveals that the characters share zero messaging history. It's a problem that used to plague TV. Why is the first message Emily in Paris has ever received from her boyfriend: 'Hey, how is Paris?' When Rebecca accidentally sends a text to her crush instead of her best friend in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, why is their history blank when we saw him text her about a housewarming party a few episodes earlier? In 2021, Wired journalist Zak Jason named a whole litany of shows in which characters don't have text histories – New Girl, Insecure, The Undoing – and argued that it was, 'inexcusable, and unnerving to witness'. It appears that studios and streamers alike were listening. Because nowadays, television writers put a huge amount of thought into getting a character's text history right – even if it is only going to appear on screen for a matter of seconds. In the currently airing dark comedy Your Friends & Neighbours, everyone texts regularly. When Jon Hamm's character Coop wants to meet up with his lover, we see a long history of past booty calls and even the bottom of a sexy snap. When his son texts his crush, it's apparent that she previously responded to something with the letter 'k'. Meanwhile, recently released thriller series The Stolen Girl features emoji-filled logs between spouses and colleagues: 'Grabbing lunch. Want anything?', 'I'm WFH today btw.' And Ted Lasso course-corrected in season three, showing viewers Ted's historic interactions with swathes of people, including a message to his upstairs neighbour: 'I swear to you, I'm not playing music.' 'It drives all of us crazy when there aren't text histories – it's something we've fought for years,' says Dave Henri, a managing partner of California-based graphic design firm Modern Motion, which he co-founded in 2009. The company developed Magic Phone, a piece of software that can be installed on prop devices on set. The app is paired with a Bluetooth keyboard that allows crew to trigger notifications, or the bubbles that appear when someone is typing, so an actor can tap out any old gibberish and still prompt the right message to appear on screen in real time. Magic Phone also enables productions to add text message histories with plausible time-stamps, and thanks to the realism of the software, it has been used by numerous Apple TV+ productions including The Morning Show, Shrinking and Ted Lasso. 'I think the studios and creatives have embraced the fact that we are so used to seeing these devices that, if it doesn't look right, the audience bumps against that,' says Modern Motion co-founder Chris Cundey. Or as Henri puts it: 'A lot of thought goes into it now because people are aware that fans are taking screen grabs, posting them on Reddit and dissecting everything.' Modern Motion employee Rob Rogers worked on Ted's elaborate text history in season three; he says the graphics went through 25 to 30 iterations before they got it right. 'We met with the writers, directors and all the showrunners to figure out what Ted would have said to his mum, or what he would've said to the doctor three months ago,' Rogers says. Some graphics were even altered after the show premiered, to improve them for people streaming later on. 'If they realised a message couldn't have been sent at 10:53am for whatever reason, they wanted to fix it to make it perfect.' A surprising amount of work goes into something that is on screen for just a brief moment. 'On just run-of-the-mill text messages, we would have 13 or 14 iterations. That comes down to thinking about what a character is named in a person's phone, what their contact image is, or whether they know each other well enough to have an image,' says Rogers. In one throwaway gag for eagle-eyed viewers, we see that Ted's mum has previously texted him to say that her internet is down, before attaching a picture of an unplugged router. 'We had like three or four different photos that they provided of that router – that's how deep we go.' While it's fun to add Easter eggs like this, past texts can't be too distracting because then audiences will miss the 'hero text' that is being sent or received as part of the plot. Script editor Charlie Niel battled with this on The Stolen Girl. While texts that were important for the storyline were written into the script by the head writers, he filled in the message histories, which were then signed off by the writers and producers. 'The crucial, crucial thing is not pulling focus,' he says. Past texts can't be 'outlandish, attention-grabbing or long' because viewers' eyes will drift up. 'On the other hand, it's a tricky balance because I also find it distracting if the messages are too generic; if they're how no one ever speaks.' Niel looked to his own real-life texts for inspiration. 'I would think, 'What do I text my colleagues about?' And it's stuff like, 'I'm going out for coffee, do you want one?'' Sometimes he would throw in a typo to make things realistic. But he also had to be careful not to include anything that would inadvertently affect the story or change the way we see the characters. Continuity was king – if a character gets a text on one day, it needs to be visible in their history the next day – sometimes with a few random other messages in between. In the end, Niel wrote between 10 and 20 historic texts for each interaction, for only one or two of them to ultimately end up on screen. At one point in The Stolen Girl, a character scrolls through the DMs sent to a media outlet's social media account and Niel had to 'adopt the voice of an internet troll' to write these messages. He also had to come up with the senders' names. Because every name that appears on screen has to be signed off by the legal department – so that, for example, a journalist named Amelia Tait couldn't sue if a journalist named Amelia Tait were featured – Niel christened some of the trolls after fellow crew members. In the end, text message histories won't make or break a show, but they are often appreciated by audiences. 'Because TV viewers are so sophisticated now, they'll notice if one little text that we say happened on 26 April contradicts something else in the script,' Niel says. Actors, too, often enjoy playing around on their phoney devices. 'Making it easy for the actors, and seeing their reaction to it, is really one of the best things,' Henri says. Apparently Harrison Ford was a fan of Magic Phone on the Shrinking set. And Cundey notes that even actors who 'hunt and peck with just two fingers' while typing can look like master hackers thanks to the software. Nowadays, if characters' text histories are missing, viewers can be a little more confident that it just might be on purpose. 'When a typing bubble appears and goes away and appears and goes away and nothing comes, that's a modern metaphor for something unresolved,' Cundey notes – texts can communicate so much with so little. And the crew behind these messages are happy that their work is starting to get noticed. 'We are an often misunderstood or passed over vocation of the industry,' says Rogers. 'But we're also ever-growing.' Or to put it another way: ppl don't say omg atm, but iykyk.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why you should think twice before using shorthand like ‘thx' and ‘k' in your texts
My brother's text messages can read like fragments of an ancient code: 'hru,' 'wyd,' 'plz' – truncated, cryptic and never quite satisfying to receive. I'll often find myself second-guessing whether 'gr8' means actual excitement or whether it's a perfunctory nod. This oddity has nagged at me for years, so I eventually embarked upon a series of studies with fellow researchers Sam Maglio and Yiran Zhang. I wanted to know whether these clipped missives might undermine genuine dialogue, exploring the unspoken signals behind digital shorthand. As we gathered data, surveyed people and set up experiments, it became clear that those tiny shortcuts – sometimes hailed as a hallmark of efficient communication – undermine relationships instead of simplifying them. Most people type 'ty' and 'brb' – for 'thank you' and 'be right back' – without batting an eye. In a survey we conducted of 150 American texters ages 18 to 65, 90.1% reported regularly using abbreviations in their daily messages, and 84.2% believed these shortcuts had either a positive effect or no meaningful impact on how the messages were perceived by the recipients. But our findings suggest that the mere inclusion of abbreviations, although seemingly benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter chops words down to their bare consonants, recipients sense a lack of effort, which causes them to disengage. It's a subtle but pervasive phenomenon that most people don't intuit. We started with controlled lab tests, presenting 1,170 participants ages 15 to 80 with one of two near-identical text exchanges: one set sprinkled with abbreviations, the other fully spelled out. In every single scenario, participants rated the abbreviating sender as less sincere and far less worthy of a reply. The deeper we dug, the more consistent the pattern became. Whether people were reading messages about weekend plans or major life events, the presence of truncated words and phrases such as 'plz,' 'sry' or 'idk' for 'please,' 'sorry' or 'I don't know' made the recipients feel shortchanged. The phenomenon didn't stop with strangers. In more experiments, we tested whether closeness changed the dynamic. If you're texting a dear friend or a romantic partner, can you abbreviate to your heart's content? Evidently not. Even people imagining themselves chatting with a longtime buddy reported feeling a little put off by half-spelled words, and that sense of disappointment chipped away at how authentic the interaction felt. Still, we had nagging doubts: Might this just be some artificial lab effect? We wondered whether real people on real platforms might behave differently. So we took our questions to Discord, a vibrant online social community where people chat about everything from anime to politics. More importantly, Discord is filled with younger people who use abbreviations like it's second nature. We messaged random users asking them to recommend TV shows to watch. One set of messages fully spelled out our inquiry; the other set was filled with abbreviations. True to our lab results, fewer people responded to the abbreviated ask. Even among digital natives – youthful, tech-savvy users who are well versed in the casual parlance of text messaging – a text plastered with shortcuts still felt undercooked. If a few missing letters can sour casual chats, what happens when love enters the equation? After all, texting has become a cornerstone of modern romance, from coy flirtations to soul-baring confessions. Could 'plz call me' inadvertently jeopardize a budding connection? Or does 'u up?' hint at more apathy than affection? These questions guided our next foray, as we set out to discover whether the swift efficiency of abbreviations might actually short-circuit the delicate dance of courtship and intimacy. Our leap into the realm of romance culminated on Valentine's Day with an online speed dating experiment. We paired participants for timed 'dates' inside a private messaging portal, and offered half of them small incentives to pepper their replies with abbreviations such as 'ty' instead of 'thank you.' When it came time to exchange contact information, the daters receiving abbreviation-heavy notes were notably more reluctant, citing a lack of effort from the other party. Perhaps the most eye-opening evidence came from a separate study running a deep analysis of hundreds of thousands of Tinder conversations. The data showed that messages stuffed with abbreviations such as 'u' and 'rly' scored fewer overall responses and short-circuited conversations. We want to be clear: We're not campaigning to ban 'lol.' Our research suggests that a few scattered abbreviations don't necessarily torpedo a friendship. Nor does every one of the many messages sent to many people every day warrant the full spelling-out treatment. Don't care about coming across as sincere? Don't need the recipient to respond? Then by all means, abbreviate away. Instead, it's the overall reliance on condensed phrases that consistently lowers our impression of the sender's sincerity. When we type 'plz' a dozen times in a conversation, we risk broadcasting that the other person isn't worth the extra letters. The effect may be subtle in a single exchange. But over time, it accumulates. If your ultimate goal is to nurture a deeper connection – be it with a friend, a sibling or a prospective date – taking an extra second to type 'thanks' might be a wise investment. Abbreviations began as a clever workaround for clunky flip phones, with its keypad texting – recall tapping '5' three times to type the letter 'L' – and strict monthly character limits. Yet here we are, long past those days, still trafficking in 'omg' and 'brb,' as though necessity never ended. After all of those studies, I've circled back to my brother's texts with fresh eyes. I've since shared with him our findings about how those tiny shortcuts can come across as half-hearted or indifferent. He still fires off 'brb' in half his texts, and I'll probably never see him type 'I'm sorry' in full. But something's shifting – he typed 'thank you' a few times, even threw in a surprisingly heartfelt 'hope you're well' the other day. It's a modest shift, but maybe that's the point: Sometimes, just a few more letters can let someone know they really matter. Sam Maglio, an Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology at the University of Toronto, contributed to the writing of this article. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: David Fang, Stanford University Read more: AIM brought instant messaging to the masses, teaching skills for modern communication Why does using a period in a text message make you sound insincere or angry? The lies we tell on dating apps to find love David Fang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Phone Arena
15-05-2025
- Business
- Phone Arena
Google RCS Business Messaging gets flashy, but is this what we wanted?
Following Google's celebration of hitting 1 billion RCS messages sent daily in the U.S., a new chapter in the RCS story is unfolding — and it's being driven by businesses. That massive number includes more than just everyday texting between friends and family. Increasingly, companies are tapping into RCS (Rich Communication Services) to send out more visually engaging marketing week, a new kind of RCS experience rolled out in North America through a partnership between Clerk Chat, Google, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Once recipient, a Los Angeles Rams fan, shared that what was received at first seemed like a regular text message, but then with the second message it was clear it was a promotion. This message came complete with photos, call-to-action buttons, swipe-right carousel interactions, and even an option to buy single-game tickets. Promotional RCS message by the LA Rams received. | Image credit — Judy_Gamble on Reddit The technology behind this campaign allows businesses to push rich content like images, videos, interactive buttons, and branded templates directly into the same messaging app you use to chat with friends. It's like SMS on steroids, and companies are clearly eager to jump in. This represents a major shift in how brands could interact with consumers on mobile, moving beyond generic SMS blasts to full-screen, colorful experiences. Igor Boshoer, co-founder and CTO of Clerk Chat But is everyone as excited about it? While it's true that these campaigns could be a more dynamic way to promote offers or connect with fans, they also raise questions about consent and privacy. RCS campaigns like this might feel intrusive if users haven't explicitly opted in. And depending on how easy it is to opt out, this could end up blurring the line between creative marketing and plain old spam. Thankfully, Google appears to be taking some precautions. As we recently reported, Google Messages is working on adding an "unsubscribe" button to RCS business messages, giving users a clearer way to manage what they receive. This small but important update could help prevent misuse of the platform as more businesses join in. Ultimately, whether RCS for business turns into a valuable new channel or an annoying source of clutter will depend on how responsibly it's used — and how much control users are given over their inboxes.
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Warning issued to anyone sending text message which is branded the most hated
Sending a message via text can be a social minefield, with endless opportunities to be misinterpreted and misread. But there's one that all users should avoid if they want to keep recipients happy, according to a study. And the controversial single-letter reply is commonly used by dads everywhere. According to the results, 'k' is the worst text message you can send, frequently driving recipients into a rage. If you send it, the person on the other end could think you're rude, detached, disinterested, or worse. The single letter often signals 'emotional distance, passive-aggression, or outright disinterest', Fast Company reports. Despite its brevity, 'k' can shut down a conversation and even send the recipient 'spiraling' into an emotional fury. Other unpopular replies include 'sure', 'okay' and the dreaded single question mark. The study, published in the International Journal of Mobile Communication, found 'k' was worse than other similarly short replies like 'ok' and 'sure'. 'K' was even worse than being left 'on read' – which is where the recipient has seen the message but opted not to respond. 'K' is an abbreviation of 'OK' or 'okay', which both tend to be interpreted as more neutral or formal compared with the single letter version. Interestingly, adding an extra letter to make 'kk' was perceived to soften the tone, making it seem less like the sender was annoyed, for example. For senders, 'k' is just a quick and simple way of acknowledging someone's message or giving the affirmative. Its meaning is akin to a quick thumbs-up, although it comes without the positive connotation of the cheery hand gesture. But it seems some people deliberately use the 'k' reply to annoy the recipient and show them that they're disinterested or don't care. Like 'lol' and 'cool', 'k' is also termed a 'dead-end' reply because they do not help keep the conversation running. Commentators on X (Twitter) weighed in on the use of 'k' in a message, with one user calling it 'too aggressive'. Someone else called it 'the digital equivalent of slamming the door while making dead eye contact'. Another said: 'K is short for 'you're dead to me', while someone else posted: 'I never understood why people would just text "K" or "Kk"'. However, one advocate of the single-letter response said: 'I've learned that rather than replying with a wall of text explaining how you feel, you should just type 'K' and hit send. 'No sense in wasting your valuable words.' According to American psychologist Dr Rachel Christopher, getting short or vague text messages like 'k' can create anxiety. 'When we receive a vague text, like 'k", the information required to give that message context is missing,' she said in a blog post. 'This frees our brain up to run wild and make up whatever meaning it would like.' Sometimes the negative perception of text messages can depend on the context – such as a dating context. According to another survey by experts at the worst messages to send on dating apps are 'hey' or 'hi', 'how are you?' and 'what are you up to?'. But others include 'you up?, 'you free tonight?' and cheesy pick-up lines such as 'did it hurt when you fell from heaven?'. Also included were dead-end replies such as 'k' and 'lol' which can give the impression that the sender wants the conversation to end. The emojis that could reveal if the sender is a NARCISSIST If you're a heavy emoji user, you may hide some dark personality traits that could hint at your inner beast, a study suggests. Scientists at Oklahoma State University have found that high emoji use is linked with negative attributes such as narcissism and even psychopathy. The experts say: 'Emoji use may be related to strategies to manipulate the perceptions of others and to present a positive impression of oneself.' The study investigated how emoji use relates to personality – but specifically three undesirable personality traits known as the Dark Triad. These are psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism, which is 'the willingness to manipulate others to advance one's own interests'. Overall, the use of 40 emoji are linked with negative personality traits.
