Apple released iOS26 on September 15, and the update brought a new Liquid glass redesign, call screening and a lot of hidden features to your iPhone. The update also lets you add backgrounds to your chats in Messages, giving you 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 image a background, use one of Apple’s preset 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 you need to know about the feature.
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How to add and change a chat background in Messages
1. Open Messages.
2. Access a chat with a saved contact.
3. Tap the name of the person or group at the top of the chat.
4. Faucet Backgrounds.
You can see seven background options depending on which iPhone you have.
You’ll see up to seven options at 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 and vivid backgrounds. Tapping on one of them also gives you several filters to choose from. For example, tapping Sky gives you the options Twilight, Mist, Sunset, and three other filters.
The Dusk filter is my favorite Sky background.
If you tap Photo, you can choose any photo from your library as your background. After selecting a photo, you can crop the image to better fit the screen or apply a filter to the image. When you’re happy with the background, tap the check mark in the upper right corner of your screen and the photo will become your background for this chat.
Pets can create cute backgrounds.
The Playground option opens Image Playground, Apple’s AI image generation tool, and is therefore only available on Apple Intelligence iPhones. You can describe an image by typing a description in the text box at the bottom of the screen, or you can choose different suggestions and themes offered by Image Playground. Once Playground has generated a background you like, tap the check mark in the upper right corner of your screen. You will then be redirected to a new page where you can apply a filter to the background if you wish. Next, tap the check mark again in the upper right corner of your screen and this image will be your chat background.
Under all these options, there is also a Suggestions section. These suggestions are mostly filled with photos and an option for Image Playground on specific iPhones. Tapping one of the photo suggestions 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 this menu – it’s a bit strange that it’s a suggestion and an option, and they don’t seem to do anything different.
It looks like a nice and comfortable library.
If you don’t like any of these options or are tired of them, you can always remove the background by choosing the default option, None.
Please be aware that if you add, edit, or remove a chat background, other people in the chat will see this change. So it might not be a good idea to make the background of the family conversation an image of you making a keg.
And don’t forget that you can add or change chat backgrounds only with people you have saved in your contacts. Otherwise you will not see the Backgrounds option mentioned above.
Should I choose a background for each conversation?
Everyone will see a chat background when you choose one.
No, and if you choose a background for a chat, it will not be reflected in other chats. So the conversation with your parents might have a photo of your graduation in the background, and the conversation with your siblings might have a photo of you giving them a noogie in the background.
This can also be a good visual cue to help you know who you’re talking to. For example, you and your spouse could have a heart-to-heart talk. If you’re not paying attention and you’re in a discussion and you can’t see the back of your heart, you know you shouldn’t text that person and ask them to pick up toilet paper from the store on the way home.
Likewise, if you have backgrounds for most of your group chats and you receive a message from a chat with no background, you know you need to check who is in the chat so you don’t boldly announce to strangers that you survived a trip to the bathroom without toilet paper.
To learn more about iOS 26, here my opinion on the operating systemhow to reduce the effects of liquid glass and how block unwanted calls in the update. You can also view our iOS 26 Cheat Sheet.
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