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Our guide to the Turn on Character Count on iPhone meaning continues below with more information and pictures of these steps. Your iPhone can send both iMessages and SMS. The iMessages are sent to other iOS users, and they are handled a little differently than regular SMS messages that you would send to someone with an Android device.
When you send an SMS message, which is shown in the Messages app by a green bubble, you can only use up to 160 characters per message. But it can be hard to keep track of this by hand, so you may be looking for a way to show how many characters are in your current message. Our guide below will show you where to find this setting.
How to Turn on Character Count on iPhone
- Open your iPhone Settings app.
- Scroll and select the “Messages” tab. You can also use the search bar at the top of Settings, rather than having to scroll and hunt for the Messages tab.
- Under the category “SMS/MMS” are several options, including “Character Count.” Toggle this setting on by tapping it. The setting should now appear green.
- Exit Settings and open a new text message conversation with someone who has an Android (or other non-Apple) device.
- As you begin entering text, you initially won’t see a character count. But don’t sweat it your character count will appear in small, grey text above the send arrow after typing around 30 characters.
What is Character count?
If you follow the character count rules for each platform, your messages will show up in full on your profile or feed, giving your audience the information they need to convert. If you go over the character limit, you risk posting things that are confusing or cut off.
It can be hard to keep track of character counts on social media. Not only do the rules change sometimes, but sometimes using all of your characters isn’t the best way to get people’s attention. Even though the number of characters you can use on each social media site is a good guide, it’s only the beginning of what you can say.
Managing character count requires taking into account the type of people who use each channel. For instance, people on LinkedIn are more likely to be looking for posts and insights about thought leadership. Because of this, research on successful LinkedIn posts has shown that posts with between 1,900 and 2,000 words do the best. On the other hand, most other social networks work better when you keep your posts short and sweet.
FAQs
Is SMS the same as iMessage? SMS is different than iMessage in this aspect as iMessage allows unlimited characters in messages. iMessage uses data rather than a cellular plan and can only be used to send direct messages between two iPhones, rather than any cell phone to any cell phone.
There is no official character limit, although some users have received error messages when approaching 20,000 characters. If an iMessage is being sent to a non-Apple phone, the message will be truncated at 160 characters, like a traditional SMS text.
It was designed to “fit in between” other signaling protocols, which is why SMS message length is limited to 160 7-bit characters, i.e., 1120 bits, or 140 bytes. SMS was first standardized as part of the 1985 GSM protocol and was subsequently codified into the SMPP signaling protocol that transmits SMS.