Apple added a bunch of new text effects, or animations, to the Messages app in iOS 18. Not only are these effects fun to use, but they can also be applied to individual words, rather than your entire message. The Messages app also adds additional formatting options for your text, including bold, italics, underline and strikethrough. Some of these options are fairly basic, but the end result is a more robust system that better competes with alternatives like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Here's a quick rundown of all the new iOS 18 text effects and what they do:

Large: Makes the selected words or emoji larger for a second and then returns to normal size.

Small: Makes words slightly smaller.