In iOS 10, the Messages app has received the Digital Touch feature, a communication feature that was previously limited to watchOS. With Digital Touch, you can send drawings, heartbeats, fireballs, kisses, and more to your friends and family, all with just a few taps.
Additionally, sketches, heartbeats, kisses, and other messages created with Digital Touch on iPhone can also be viewed on Apple Watch, and vice versa. This increases the ways in which we can express ourselves. Let's see how it works.
Access to Digital Touch
- Open the Messages app on your iPhone.
- Open an existing conversation or start a new one.
- Touch the icon identified with two fingers on a heart.
- Click on the right arrow to expand the Digital Touch window.
You can send text and drawings using the smaller interface that replaces the keyboard, but now you have more space, the entire screen of the iPhone.
The Digital Touch interface supports various touch-based gestures, you can draw or write using one finger and even mark short videos with the included video tool.
Draw
To draw with the Digital Touch feature, simply start drawing in the black box, visible in both standard view mode and full screen mode. When using standard view, tap on the small circle on the left side of the screen to see the different color options. In full screen mode, colors are available at the top.
TIP: to access custom colors, make a long press on any of the color samples. A color wheel will open with custom color options to make your drawings unique.
On Apple Watch, Digital Touch drawings are sent as soon as you take your finger off the screen for a few seconds, but on iPhone and iPad, you can take your time because drawings are not shipped until you tap the submit arrow.
The person who receives your drawing made with Digital Touch will see it as if you were doing it in real time, just as you have done. It is like a video that shows the process you have followed to complete your drawing.
And when you receive a drawing made with Digital Touch through Messages, click on it and you will be able to see it in full screen.
Annotate in Photos and Videos
A unique feature of Digital Touch on iPhone and iPad is the ability to take photos or record short 10-second videos that can be annotated using available tools. This is how you do it:
- In the Digital Touch interface, click on the camera icon.
- Choose the front camera or the main back camera by tapping the smaller camera icon at the bottom right of the screen. The front camera is the one that is preselected.
- Press the red button to start recording. While the video is being recorded, you can use the Digital Touch tools to draw that you see at the top.
- Alternatively, if you want to draw on the screen before you start recording, just start drawing with one finger. When you are done, press the start recording button and the video will be recorded holding the drawing above it.
- To take a photo, press the white button instead of the red button. Then you can start drawing and writing annotations as if it were a video. The system is exactly the same.
- In addition to drawing on photos and videos, you can also use gestures to add heartbeats, kisses, and more.
- Press the blue arrow to send the photo or video once you have finished it.
As you can see, the Digital Touch function gives a lot of play to our conversations in the renewed Messages app for iOS 10. But there is still much more, so don't miss the second part of this post.