How to make an iMessage screenshot that looks real

What you need

A contact name, a profile photo if you want one, and a short script. Fakeconvo's iMessage generator draws the chat in the iPhone Messages style, is free, needs no account and puts no watermark on the PNG. Your photos and text stay in your browser.

Five steps to a realistic iMessage chat

1. Set up the header. Under People, type the other person's name; it shows under a round avatar with their initial, or click the round button before the name to add a profile photo. For a group, turn on "Group chat" and use "+ Add person": the header shows up to three member avatars, and the "Group name" you type. Leave the name empty and iMessage calls it "4 People", counting you.
2. Write the messages. Under Messages, use "+ From …" for the others and "+ From me" for yours. Yours are blue on the right, theirs grey on the left, and only the last bubble of a run gets the tail. In a group, the sender's name sits above their first bubble and their small avatar next to their last one. The chat opens with "iMessage" and "Today" plus the first message's time, and a pause of an hour or more adds its own "Today" time line.
3. Set the receipt. iMessage shows a receipt only under your newest message: pick "Delivered" or "Read" in its "Status" and you get "Delivered" or "Read" with the time; "Sent" shows nothing yet. Turn off "Read receipts" and "Read" goes back to "Delivered", just like when someone has read receipts switched off. "Show timestamps" hides the time lines.
4. Add replies, Tapbacks and photos. Pick an older message in "Reply to" and iMessage repeats it as a faint outlined bubble above the reply, on its sender's side, with a thin line across when the reply comes from the other side. Under "Reactions", tap an emoji and it sits as a Tapback on the bubble's top corner. "+ Photo" sends an image, with an optional "Caption" bubble under it. Use "+ Date / notice" for a line like "Anna named the conversation".
5. Set the look and export. Turn on "Dark mode" for the dark theme, set the "Status bar time" and battery, and download the PNG at 2x or 3x, as the phone screen or the whole chat.

Details that make an iMessage look staged

Texts on an iPhone are short and quick: several bubbles in a row, a Tapback instead of an answer, lowercase when the person types that way. A long paragraph with perfect punctuation reads like an email, not a text.

Watch the receipt and the clock. "Read" belongs under your last message only, and its time can't be earlier than that message. A reply right after "Delivered" is fine; a long silence after "Read" tells its own story. Set the status bar time a little after the last message, and don't mix looks: green SMS bubbles, ticks or "Seen" belong to other apps.

Use it the right way

iMessage screenshots are for videos, ads, stories, app mock-ups and lessons, such as showing a class what a "your parcel is on hold, pay the fee here" text scam looks like. Do not put words in the mouths of real people, do not make a chat that looks like proof of something that never happened, and do not use one to scam, bully or embarrass anyone. Our acceptable use page has the details.