This large Pokemon Go SMS group text thread gets inundated with iOS Tapback reactions. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge
Anyone who’s been in a text message group chat with participants spread across iOS and Android probably knows about the annoying reaction texts coming from iPhone users, usually formatted as: Person A Liked/Disliked “Person B’s message.” But now, after Google implemented a workaround inside its text message app on Android, Apple is doing something about it with iOS 16. After the update, it will hide those written messages and output them as the expected bubble icon next to the message it was in reaction to (via 9to5Mac).
Google’s fix on the Android side earlier this year worked a similar way, by adding iOS-friendly emoji reactions to the Google Messages app. Apple’s iMessage Tapbacks have since appeared as proper emoji icons on Androids…
