It's a fix for a long-standing annoyance.
K. Holt spoke on 11.22.21
Apple.
The latest version of the Messages app seems to fix a long-standing issue for users of the app, which displays reactions sent via Apple's iMessage correctly. The app now turns Tapbacks into symbols.
Messages has been converting Tapbacks into "fallback" text. Messages displayed the response as its own line of text, if an Android user sent a message to an iPhone owner and their friend used the thumbs up reaction. It made conversations messier than they needed to be.
There are some differences between Messages on the RCS platform and those on the Tapbacks platform. Apple uses a heart icon, a "ha ha" label and other symbols, while Google uses a symbol called a "emoji". The heart appears to be turned into a face with heart eyes, "ha ha" into a laughing face, and so on. It's still cleaner than the previous method of displaying Tapbacks, but there are some nuances that might get lost in translation.
9to5 was the first to report on the change. The update is rolling out. We're not quite at the stage where iMessage is on the other side of the world, but at least we're getting a little nicer with it.
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