I was recently asked on Twitter which iMessage apps I use regularly, and thought it might well be worth a blog post - there are some really useful iMessage apps out there, but most people just seem to use stickers! (Not that stickers aren’t great of course.)

Airmail

If you’ve ever wanted or needed to send an email attachment via iMessage this is an easy way to do it. You simply get a list of attachments on emails, allowing you to send the file onwards.

Citymapper

This particular app is very useful - you can send your current location, a recently searched for destination, or your current trip. Very useful if you’re trying to meet up with people!
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Copied

I love Copied, it’s a great clipboard manager that syncs between iOS and macOS, and you have access to images in it iMessage app. I often share to Copied and then I can use either the keyboard or the iMessage app to share things on.

Doodle

If you’ve ever tried to arrange an event that involves more than one person you’ve done the back and forth of “are you free then? No, how about next week? FIne, I give up” (or similar), Doodle is fabulous to help you fix that - you just create a poll when you are available, and everyone votes for the dates that work for them. Well throw that into a group iMessage and you’ve saved yourself 100 notifications (more or less, depending on the size of the group and how busy their schedules are!).

Drafts

I often start my writing in Drafts, regardless of what it is, and now I can grab a Draft and send it via iMessage. It’s very useful and helps you avoid that copy and paste dance!

Dropbox

If you want to send a file that’s stored in Dropbox this is the easiest way.

Glympse

I love sharing my location with people to help us find one another, Glympse goes a few steps above Find Friends here. You can choose to share for a time period, or until you get a location - if you do that it calculates the route and shows the person where you are on your route, how fast you’re moving, and your estimated arrival time. Being able to share it via iMessage is extremely useful, especially as the other person doesn’t need to be using Glympse check on you.

Mapstr

Mapstr is one of my favourite apps, I bookmark locations in it all the time, and I frequently want to share them! With the iMessage app you can search for a location - sorted by nearest to you automatically. The shared item results in a map, with the name and tags you have specified - so the person could import it directly if they wanted to.

Music

I like to share music with people, they probably heard about it months, years, or decades before I came across it, but it’s fun nonetheless. With the iMessage app I can send the exact track I’m listening to right now to a friend - or pick something earlier from my playing history.
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OneDrive

This works the same way the Dropbox app does, but with OneDrive (funny that). It’s pretty useful for Word documents I’ve had to wrangle.

TripIt

I travel, a lot. At least compared to some people. I love to use TripIt to share parts of my trip with people. It formats things prettily, while still giving them the information they would want.
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Week Calendar

I usually invite people to calendar events if they’re involved or affected by it, however sometimes that’s not practical. It’s nice to be able to share the details of an event though. What’s great about this app is it shares both the text (name of the event, start date/time, end date/time), and it also shares a URL, from the URL the person can add an ICS file straight to their calendar of the exact event if they like, or use iOS’s smart recogniition to add their own event from the dates.

Yelp

I don’t save everything to Mapstr - so Yelp comes in handy, especially when evaluating options. You can search and choose from recently searched for locations, and share them - by default the preview shows an image with the name and rating overlaid - but with the address underneath, so once you’ve finally picked the perfect pancake place you can head right there.
{.image-center) iMessage apps certainly come in handy, which ones are you using?