The new iMessage animations in iOS 10 are a lot of fun, but if you find that they’re not actually working, you’ll want to check your iOS Accessibility settings.
After iOS 7 debuted its “parallax effect,” many iPhone users found it distracting or nauseating and decided to disable it by turning on Reduce Motion under Accessibility settings.
If you had this setting enabled before, it stays enabled after you update to iOS 10 — and as part of reducing motion, it also logically turns off any motion-related effects in the iOS 10 Messages app, such as animated bubbles and background animations.
With Reduce Motion enabled, in fact, you not only won’t be able to receive or see these effects, but you can’t send iMessages using the effects either — pressing and holding on the Send button will have no effect at all, and Apple doesn’t make it particularly obvious that these features are dependent on the Reduce Motion setting.
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