When Apple released iOS 26 in September, the company gave your iPhone the ability to customize chat backgrounds in Messages. Chat backgrounds can add a fun, personal touch to messages. They can give you a visual identifier for each thread so you can easily tell if you're messaging the right person or group, too. 

With this new feature, you can use your own picture as a background, choose one of Apple's premade backgrounds or, if you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, generate a unique background. Just know that if you add a background to a chat, everyone in that chat will see it. So choose carefully.

Here's how to change a chat background in Messages on iOS 26, and what you need to know about the feature. 

How to add and change a chat background in Messages

1. Open Messages.
2. Tap into a chat with a saved contact. 
3. Tap either the person's or group's name near the top of the chat. 
4. Tap Backgrounds.

You'll see up to seven options near the top of the Backgrounds menu: None (default), Photo, Color, Sky, Water, Aurora and Playground on Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones.

Color, Sky, Water and Aurora are all abstract, live backgrounds. Tapping any of these also gives you multiple filters you can choose from. For instance, tapping Sky gives you the options of Dusk, Haze, Sunset and three other filters. 

If you tap Photo, you can choose any photo in your Library as your background. After selecting a photo, you can crop it to better fit the screen or apply a filter. When you're happy with the background, tap the checkmark in the top right corner of your screen, and the photo will become your background for that chat.

The Playground option opens Image Playground, Apple's AI image generation tool, and is therefore available only on Apple Intelligence iPhones. You can describe an image by typing a description into the textbox at the bottom of the screen, or you can pick different suggestions and themes Image Playground offers. Once Playground generates a background you like, tap the checkmark in the top right corner of your screen. You will then be taken to a new page where you can apply a filter to the background if you want. Then tap the checkmark in the top-right corner of your screen again, and that image will be your chat background.

Below all these options is a Suggestions section. These suggestions are mostly filled with photos and an option for Image Playground on specific iPhones. Tapping any photo suggestion takes you to the same menu where you can resize or add a filter to the photo before accepting it. Tapping the Image Playground option just opens that menu -- it's kind of odd that this is both a suggestion and an option, and they don't seem to do anything differently.

If you don't like any of these options, or you get tired of them, you can always remove the background by choosing the default option, None. 

Be aware that if you add, change or remove a chat background, the other people in the chat will see that alteration. So it might not be a good idea to make the family chat background a picture of you doing a kegstand.

And don't forget, you can add or alter chat backgrounds only with people you have saved in your contacts. Otherwise, you won't see the Backgrounds option mentioned above.

Do I have to choose a background for every chat?

No, and if you choose a background for one chat, it won't carry over to any other chats. So the chat with your parents might have a picture of your graduation as the background, and the chat with your siblings might have a picture of you giving them a noogie as the background.

This can be a nice visual cue for you to help you keep track of who you're talking with. For example, you and your spouse might have a chat background of hearts. If you aren't paying attention and tap into a chat and don't see your hearts background, you know you shouldn't text this person and ask them to pick up toilet paper from the store on their way home.

Similarly, if you have backgrounds for most of your group chats and you get a message from a chat without a background, you know you should double-check who is in the chat so you don't boldly announce to strangers that you survived a bathroom trip without toilet paper. 

For more iOS news, here's what to know about iOS 26.4 and iOS 26.3. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.

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