How to send group text messages on iPhone

We all know how to send an SMS or iMessage to a group of friends: open up the Messages application and type in the name of the contacts you want to include in this group message. This is fine if you want to send a text message to just a handful of contacts, but what if you want to send a message to 25 contacts, for example? Adding each of them to the group chat could be a time-consuming process.

As always, the App Store can provide a solution to this problem. We will show you how to text message a group of contacts on your iPhone in a quick and efficient manner. To do so, we’ll be using our application called Contact Groups, an app we developed ourselves. There are other applications that can streamline your group messaging, but we’ll be using Contact Groups as it is a free alternative that works really well for what we want to accomplish.

iPhone group text message

Pre-requisites

Before we get into how to send messages to a group, you will obviously have to have created groups of contacts first. We have two tutorials about this topic, in case you don’t know how to create contact groups:

Note that the message will be sent as a Group MMS, even if recipients have iMessage enabled. This being said you should make sure you have a mobile plan that allows for MMS messaging and find out whether your carrier may charge extra for sending MMS. If you are in the US, chances are there are no extra charges for this, but it’s always worth verifying.

How to send group messages on iPhone

1) Download Contact Groups from the App Store, then launch the app and give it access to your contacts. Tap the plus button to create a group. If you need help, please see the articles we linked above.

2) In the list view, select the contact group you want to send a group text message to.

List of contact groups

3) Tap the green text icon.

Tap the green text icon in Contact Groups app on iPhone

4) For each contact, the app lists all available phone numbers. Because we want to send a text message to a cellphone, we want to make sure we only select phone numbers that can receive text messages.

Write group text

5) Tap the Write Message button when you’re ready to type the message.

6) A New Message compose sheet will appear on your screen. The name of the participants in your group will be automatically populated. All you have to do now is type your message and tap Send, as you would normally do.

Draft SMS to send to group

7) If you want to add to this group conversation after sending the initial message, you can go directly into the Messages app, where your group SMS will be. Replies from your contacts will be added to this conversation, and you will be able to text directly from there in the future.

View the group sms conversation on iPhone

Download Contact Groups

Other tips you might find interesting: