5 cool things to try in Apple's iOS 18 public beta

The public beta of iOS 18 lets you format and apply special effects to words in a text message. For this, open or start a conversation in Messages. Type a few words as part of a new message. Select any word or words. From the menu that pops up, tap the left or right arrow until you see an option for Text Effects. Tap that option to display the formatting window at the bottom.

You can now apply bold, italics, underline, or strikethrough for the selected text. To spruce it up further, tap one of the text effects, such as Big, Small, Shake, Explore, or Ripple. The only limitation is that the recipient also needs iOS 18 to see the effects.