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Digital Ink: sending hand-drawn messages | iOS 11 Guide

iMessage allows you to share hand-drawn sketches and other personalized animations using Digital Ink. Here’s how.

Start a new message and enter the recipient, or open a previous message to reply. Tap the App Drawer button next to the text entry field, and then and tap on the icon of a heart with two fingers along the bottom.

Here, use your finger to sketch out a design or a message on the black rectangle. To change the color, simply tap the round icon on the left-hand side.

Press the blue send button to send your drawing to the recipient. It will play back as an animation, as if you were drawing it live on their device.

Prefer to send a heartbeat? It’s easy – there are a number of options for pre-programmed designs, one being a heartbeat, which has been seen previously on the Apple Watch.

To do this, hold two fingers down and a heartbeat will animate behind them. Want to send a kiss instead? Tap with two fingers.

You can also sketch on to video or still images – to do this, tap the camera icon and use your finger to sketch over the image.

Digital Touch images aren’t permanent. Unlike sending conventional media like photos or videos, these quirky messages will automatically disappear after two minutes. You can press the Keep button beneath the message if you receive one that you really want to make into a permanent fixture of your chat, though.