Screengrab from WWDC Keynote 2016

Messages, by Apple’s own admission, is the “most frequently used app on iOS”. It has been bothering me a lot for the past several years that most other messaging apps are adding useful stuff continuously to their apps, while we are waiting on Apple to deliver. Here’s a few changes I would love to see in the app and why.

Improved Search

Ever tried searching for a specific message? Don’t worry, you won’t find it unless it was the last time you mentioned it to someone. So if you have mentioned the search term 20 times in your chats with a friend, it will only show the 20th time it was mentioned in that conversation, and none of the previous times.🙄 Here’s how uber-functional WhatsApp does it:

WhatsApp: A textbook example of a functional Search

Links section

Your best friend messaged you a couple web links to read a few months back? Good luck finding those.😣 Here’s how WhatsApp finds them for you:

WhatsApp: Finding links shared in each chat is a breeze

Starred Messages

Someone sent directions to your meeting place? Or a link to follow up? If you have texted for a bit after that, again good luck finding those.😅 Here’s how WhatsApp does it:

WhatsApp: Getting back to individual messages and follow the chat around that time

Scrolling performance

So search doesn’t work. Links can’t be found easily. Individual messages can’t be starred. So let’s find the message you are looking for the old-fashioned way. By scrolling…🤐

Don’t bother. Scrolling through old messages of your loved ones or finding an old conversation is such a pain that you would give up. I tried to find the first message I have sent to one of my besties on both Messages and on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, I found 2 year old messages in less than 3–4 minutes of scrolling. On Messages, I didn’t dare. I tried Messages on my Mac instead, expecting desktop level performance on my (albeit old) Mac to have a better chance. After 15 minutes of intermittent scrolling and waiting, I hadn’t scrolled past the most recent 6 months. 😓

Mute message notifications from unknown numbers (opt-in)

Offer an option to mute notifications from Messages from people not in Contacts (too many spam messages these days), while keeping notifications turned on for Contacts. We shouldn’t have to wait for random texts to appear before we can mute them when they do it again.

In fact Uber and UberEats messages me from a new number every single time. 🤬

Pinned Chats

WhatsApp lets you pin chats to the top with a simple swipe

Letting us pin important chats to the top of the list helps us find it in the sea of spam text messages. Once again, WhatsApp offers a simple solution with a simple swipe on each chat.

Apple’s priority?

Although “3x bigger emoji” earned Apple the most applause during the WWDC 2016 keynote, people really would love to see the useful changes too. Keeping my fingers crossed! 🤞🏻

Follow me on Twitter @gitangular for more stories about Apple, apps and technology in general.