Apple released iOS 26 on Monday , a few months after the company announced it at the June Worldwide Developers Conference. The update brings a new Liquid Glass redesign, call screening and lots of hidden features for your iPhone . The update also lets you add backgrounds to your chats in Messages, giving a visual identifier for each thread so you can easily tell if you're messaging the right person or group.

With this new feature, you can make your own picture a background, use one of Apple's premade backgrounds and if you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, you can generate your own unique background.

Here's how to change a chat background in Messages with iOS 26 and what tot know about the feature.

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