In this article
A message can be sent with an effect attached: the bubble arrives and something happens across the recipient's screen — confetti, fire, a burst of hearts — chosen by you before sending.
It is aimed at one person at one moment, which is what separates it from every other decoration in the app.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Attach an effect to a message you are sending.
- check_circle Know what the other person actually experiences.
- check_circle Use it where it adds something.
- check_circle Turn the animations off if they are not for you.
The effect is picked on the send button before the message goes, not added afterwards.
celebration Tone, for one message
Text is bad at tone and everybody knows it. The usual fixes — an exclamation mark, an emoji, a sticker — all sit inside the message and are read alongside it. An effect happens around the message instead, which is a different kind of signal: the words say the thing, the screen says how you meant it.
That is genuinely useful in the narrow set of moments it was built for. Congratulations, an announcement somebody has been waiting for, a yes to something that mattered. In those cases the effect is doing work no wording would have done.
Everywhere else it is noise, and expensive noise: the recipient's screen is taken over for a second while they are reading something else, on a device they are holding for their own reasons. An effect on a routine message is a small imposition dressed as warmth.
The frequency question answers itself once you have seen somebody overuse it. Effects work because they are unusual; a person who attaches one to every message has converted a signal into a texture, and their genuinely good news now arrives looking exactly like everything else they send.
Four moments
One is what the feature is for; the rest are where it goes wrong.
celebration News somebody was waiting for
work Reading the room
groups Several screens at once
motion_photos_off If motion bothers you
An effect is tone for one message. Used monthly it means something; used daily it means nothing.
settings Sending one
- Write the message The effect does not replace saying it.
- Hold the send button The effects appear there.
- Pick one that matches the news Rather than the best-looking one.
- Think about the group size Every member's screen is involved.
- Leave it off at work Unless it is a result everybody shares.
- Turn the animations down in settings If they bother you as a reader.
This page makes one message louder. The curriculum step is the other direction: sending without a sound, what frequency does to an audience, and choosing deliberately how much of somebody's attention each message asks for.
At a glance
- 1Message effects
Hold Send and pick an effect for a private chat.
- 2Plays once
The effect plays when the other person opens it.
- 3Use rarely
Effects work because they are unusual.
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