Apple at this year's WWDC emphasized that its approach to iOS 27 development was to add fewer newer features and instead make existing features better. Examples of that approach can be seen across the operating system, but it is arguably most obvious in the changes coming to Messages.
That's not to say there's nothing original coming to Messages in iOS 27. For instance, one new Apple Intelligence feature brings content-aware suggestions directly into conversations. If someone asks for photos, for example, Messages can recognize what's being discussed and suggest searching your photo library, using details like people, places, and keywords to surface relevant images.
The app can also detect when a conversation would benefit from creating a reminder or note and offer a shortcut to do so without leaving the thread. Apple is also bringing drawing tools directly into Messages, allowing users to create and share hand-drawn sketches within conversations.
Otherwise, Apple's focus has been on making the following enhancements and improvements to its broader Messages platform:
- Faster message loading: Large conversations, especially those containing years of history and thousands of attachments, should load and scroll more quickly.
- Improved syncing across devices: Apple says Messages, read states, reactions, and attachments sync more reliably and quickly between iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.
- Find offloaded media in Messages: Search can surface photos and videos that have been offloaded from local storage and stored in iCloud.
- Thumbnails for offloaded media: Offloaded photos and videos now get visible preview thumbnails instead of generic placeholders, making older media easier to identify.
- Personalized Smart Reply suggestions: Apple Intelligence-generated Smart Reply suggestions can now reflect a user's own writing style, making suggested responses feel more natural and personal.
- Consolidated notifications for multiple Tapbacks: Multiple reactions to a message are grouped into a single notification rather than generating separate alerts.
- Continuous sending of photos, videos, and text: Messages continue sending in the background and automatically resume when connectivity returns, reducing interrupted sends.
- Search conversations by phone number or nickname: Conversation search now works with saved nicknames and phone numbers, not just contact names.
- Faster access to recent camera captures: Newly captured photos and videos appear more quickly in the Messages media picker.
- Failed messages automatically retry sending: Messages that fail because of temporary network issues will automatically attempt to resend without the user's intervention.
Early adopters of iOS 27 will receive access to the public beta next month, when they can try out the new features and improvements themselves. Apple is expected to make a general release available in the fall.
