Hi all, I hope you all are doing well.
Does anyone know a solution for sending multiple text messages to individual people? I used to use a shortcut way back in iOS 17 called mass message that allowed me to select multiple contacts and it sends the same message to individual recipients. It worked for a while, but then once iOS 18 was released, when I ran the shortcut, the following error message said: cannot run mass message. There was a problem communicating with the app. for now, I have to forward messages individually to each contact. That's fine and all, but it takes a lot of time to do. If the shortcut still worked, I would've been able to still use it. Hopefully you guys have a solution. Maybe a workaround to the shortcut itself or an app that is integrated with iMessage/SMS, and is accessible. thanks!
Comments
I've never found a great way of doing this
If I want to send a message to multiple people, I open Messages, select 'compose' and then I choose 'add contact', but the trouble is, when I've added a contact, it then takes me out the list of contacts, so I then have to keep hitting the 'ad a contact' button and either search for the one I want, or navigate alphabetically, it's the bit where VoiceOver announces 'section A, B' etc., and then I double tap on that, and then the cycle starts all over again. I've never heard of an easier way of doing this. There are no selection options like in Outlook or any of the other mail apps. I just tried double tapping and holding on a person's name, and double tapping on the heading where it says 'iCloud', that's where my contacts are stored, but nothing. There isn't an option for selecting multiple contacts. If anybody else has any good ideas, I'd love to hear about them too.
Why not just use Siri?
Apologies if i somehow missed where this was already suggested, but why not just say, "Hey Siri, send a text to Bob, Dave, Sally, Joe, Mark, Diane, and Alice"?
Siri will respond with, "Ok, what do you want to say to the group"?
. . . and just go from there? :)
Mass Texts.
Yes, Brian. I was going to suggest the same thing. Siri does well with sending group texts.
Same Message to Multiple People Individually
I think what the OP is asking for is a solution for sending the same message to multiple people individually.
Multiple messages to individuals and Siri for group messages
Hi JC,
OK, now I understand what you mean from re-reading your post! Sorry I misunderstood. Unfortunately I haven't got a great solution for this either. If I'm ever in that situation, I write the message in an email, send that to my phone, and just copy the email into a new message for every contact. You could of course use the Notes app on the iPhone for this too. This is OK for a few contacts, but if you want to send the same message to 20 contacts, this would get annoying. I just tried the Siri thing for group messages. As I don't like dictating whole messages to Siri, I found that I can tell it to send a message to a couple of contacts, and then I can double tap on the group it then creates, and then I can write my message in the normal way. But thanks to Brian and others for that suggestion. I imagine there might be an issue if a contact has more than one mobile number saved, which I think one or two of mine do. I'll have to cross that bridge if it ever happens.
replying to comments
Hi all, thank you so much for your comments. Yes. As the previous poster said, I would like a solution for sending messages individually rather than in a group setting. This could be very useful if you want to send the same message to multiple people in separate messages rather than in a group setting. The shortcut really helped with that, but after iOS 18 was released, when I ran the shortcut it gave me a cannot run shortcut error every time. I could create a new shortcut, but that's going to take longer for me to do and I'm not much of a creator of shortcuts. I'll continue to monitor this post for future suggestions you guys come up with.
Group messages
Sorry JC. I too misunderstood your initial question. Kind of like another poster suggested, if you want to send the same message to a group of people, I wonder if it would be easier to send it by email. You could use the BCC field and send to multiple people.