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If there’s a link in a Messages conversation that you want to refer to in the future, here’s how to keep track of important information by pinning it in iOS 16 and iPadOS 16.1.
Some conversations can be extremely important, such as text-based business meetings that contain documents. They can also be more relaxed conversations that can bring up interesting things or things you really should remember, like a link to a product to buy.
While you can open a link in a browser and save a bookmark for later, this can be time consuming and a big mess to complete. Especially if you prefer to focus on the conversation itself.
Conveniently, Apple includes a feature in Messages for iOS 16 and iPadOS 16.1 that lets you pin items in a conversation thread for easy retrieval later.
The typical “pinning” of items in other communication systems might keep the selected item at the top of a page within easy reach, but Apple handles the concept differently. Instead, it highlights the message with a pin symbol.
Pinned items are also placed in a list along with other pinned items, so you can quickly see everything you’ve previously pinned in one place.
Pin elements
While you may want to pin everything in a conversation, it’s actually a more restrictive feature than you think. While previously you would have been able to pin shared images and documents, now you’re pretty much limited to items shared online.
Pinned items get a yellow pin icon.
Think more URLs for articles and YouTube videos instead of PDFs of bank statements or Word documents.
How to pin items in a conversation in Messages
- Open Messagesand select the corresponding conversation. Navigate to the item you want to pin.
- long press the link or item you want to pin until a pop-up menu appears.
- Play Pin.
Pinning an item adds a yellow pin icon next to the message.
The same process can be used to remove a pin from a pinned item. The exception is the last step, as you have to tap Unpin instead.
view pins
Aside from scanning a conversation for the yellow icon, there’s an easier way to check what you’ve recently and previously pinned.
See pinned messages in Messages
- In a conversation thread, select the Profile picture and name at the top of the page.
- Scroll down to the section marked Paws. This will give you a list of recently added pins.
- To see a complete and historical list of pins, tap See everything.
pin removal
Let’s say you’re sending links to someone through Messages and they’re meant to be temporarily available to that person. At a later time, you may want to remove that link from the conversation, but you don’t want to browse the conversation to find it again.
You can remove pinned links later within Messages for iOS 16.
Pinning the link will give you a list of what you’ve shared, but it will also give you the opportunity to remove the link from the thread later.
How to remove pinned links from a conversation in Messages
- Enter the pin list selecting the Profile picture and the name at the top of the thread, scroll down to Paws and touch See everything.
- In the list of Pins, tap Select in the upper right corner.
- Select relevant Pins to remove by touchingadding a check mark to each.
- Once all are selected, touch Eraseafter delete link.
Remember that this not only removes a pin from a link, it removes the link from the conversation thread altogether.
