iPhone Text Effects: Every Screen and Bubble Effect
To send an iPhone text effect, type your message, then touch and hold the blue send arrow instead of tapping it. Choose Screen for full screen effects like confetti, fireworks and balloons, or Bubble for effects on the message itself, then tap send. Both people need iMessage.
Your iPhone can throw confetti across someone's screen, set off fireworks behind their message, or hide your text under digital scratch off ink. Most people find one of these by accident and never discover the rest. Here is the complete set, how to send each one, the words that fire them off automatically, and the fix for when nothing happens.
How to send any effect
The trick is that you do not tap the send button. You hold it.
- Type your message as normal
- Touch and hold the blue send arrow instead of tapping it
- A menu opens with two tabs at the top: Bubble and Screen
- Tap an effect to preview it
- Tap the send arrow next to the effect you want
If holding the arrow does nothing, you are almost certainly in a green bubble conversation. Effects only travel over iMessage, which means both people need an iPhone, iPad or Mac signed in to iMessage.
The nine screen effects
Screen effects take over the whole conversation for a couple of seconds.
| Effect | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Confetti | Coloured paper rains down the screen |
| Fireworks | Bursts explode behind the conversation |
| Balloons | Balloons float up from the bottom |
| Lasers | Neon beams sweep across with a sound effect |
| Love | A large heart swells up from the message |
| Celebration | Golden sparks shoot up like indoor pyrotechnics |
| Shooting star | A single star streaks across the dark |
| Spotlight | A beam picks out your message and dims everything else |
| Echo | Your message multiplies and floods the screen dozens of times |
Echo is the one nobody expects. Send a single heart emoji with echo and it buries the screen. It is the most reliable way to make someone laugh in a group chat.
The four bubble effects
Bubble effects change how the message itself arrives, and they are quieter and more useful day to day.
- Slam drops the bubble down hard enough to shake the screen
- Loud makes the text swell up large before settling
- Gentle makes it arrive small and shy, good for an apology
- Invisible ink blurs the message under static until the other person swipes across to reveal it
Invisible ink is the practical one. Use it for a surprise, a spoiler, or a photo that should not appear as a preview on a lock screen in front of other people.
Words that trigger effects automatically
Some phrases fire an effect on their own, with no holding of the send button at all. Type any of these and send normally:
- Happy Birthday sends balloons
- Congratulations or Congrats sends confetti
- Happy New Year sends fireworks
- Pew pew sends lasers
This is why people search for iPhone text effects like happy birthday. That phrase has its own built in animation, and it is the effect most people meet first.
How to text confetti specifically
Confetti is the most requested one, so here it is on its own:
- Type Congratulations and send it, and confetti plays automatically, or
- Type any message, hold the send arrow, choose the Screen tab, swipe to Confetti and send
Both routes produce the same animation. The automatic one only works with the congratulations wording, so use the hold and send method when you want confetti on different words.
When effects will not play
If you send an effect and the other person says they saw nothing, work through these in order.
- Check the bubble colour. Blue is iMessage and carries effects. Green is SMS or RCS, usually an Android phone, and strips them out completely.
- Check Reduce Motion. Go to Settings, then Accessibility, then Motion. If Reduce Motion is on, screen effects will not play automatically. On the same screen, make sure Auto Play Message Effects is switched on.
- Check the connection. Effects need iMessage to be working, so a message stuck as SMS will lose them.
- Tap Replay. If the animation was missed, the receiver can tap the small Replay label under the message to watch it again.
A separate thing people mix up with effects: a tapback is the little reaction you add by holding a message and choosing a heart, thumbs up or exclamation mark. Useful, but it is a reaction rather than an animation.
What Android can and cannot do
Android has no equivalent to the iMessage screen effect menu. Google Messages over RCS supports reactions and some limited animated moments, but there is no reliable way to make confetti or fireworks land on an iPhone user's screen from an Android phone, and no way to receive iMessage effects on Android at all.
If you are on Android, or you are messaging someone who is, see the guide to fireworks text messages on Android.
Alternatives when effects are not available
If the conversation is green, or you are messaging on WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger where none of this exists, you still have options.
- Animated stickers and gifs from the keyboard work in almost any app
- An ecard or a short video can be shared as a link, which no effect can do
- A photo or card with a caption written over it survives the scroll better than an animation, and images can be saved
The limitation nobody mentions
Every effect above has the same two problems. It only works inside iMessage, and it cannot say the person's name.
Confetti is confetti. It looks identical whether you celebrate a birthday, a new job or a wedding, and it disappears in two seconds. Nobody screenshots it, nobody can share it onward, and it never leaves the chat.
The way around both problems
Make the animation yourself, with their actual name written in it, and send it as a video or a link. That works in any app, on any phone, in a group chat, on WhatsApp, on Instagram, anywhere.
- Open the free text fireworks tool
- Type Happy Birthday on the first line and their name underneath
- Choose your colours
- Download the video or copy the link and paste it into the chat
It is free, there is no watermark, no sign up and no app to install, and because it is an ordinary video file it lands the same on iPhone and Android.
For the fireworks effect specifically, and how it compares with a made video side by side, read how to text fireworks on iPhone or the full list of methods in how to send fireworks in a text. If you need words to go with it, browse the happy birthday wishes collection.