If you use your iPhone to text a large group of people—such as your family, your coworkers, and various friends—your Messages app can quickly become chaotic. Every time you receive a new text from your dentist or a delivery driver, it pushes the important conversations with your spouse or best friend further down the list, forcing you to scroll endlessly to find them again.
Apple recognized this frustration and introduced a feature that allows you to permanently anchor your most important conversations to the absolute top of the screen.
How to Pin a Conversation
You can pin both individual people and active group chats to the top of your Messages app. You are allowed to pin a maximum of nine different conversations.
- Open the Messages app on your iPhone.
- Scroll through your list of conversations until you find the person or group you want to prioritize.
- Press and hold your finger firmly on that specific conversation for about two seconds (do not just tap it to open the chat).
- A preview window will pop up along with a short menu.
- Tap on Pin.
The standard rectangular conversation block will instantly disappear from the chronological list. Instead, a large circular icon featuring that person’s contact photo (or initials) will permanently appear at the very top of your screen.
How Pinned Conversations Work
Once a conversation is pinned, it ignores the normal chronological sorting rules. It will never move down the screen, regardless of how many new texts you receive from other people.
When the pinned person sends you a new message, you will see a tiny preview of their text bubble pop up directly over their circular icon, making it incredibly easy to see what they said without even having to open the chat.
How to Unpin a Conversation
If you no longer need to prioritize a specific person (for example, if a group project has ended), you can easily demote them back to the normal chronological list.
- Look at the large circular icons at the top of your Messages app.
- Press and hold on the icon you want to remove.
- Tap on Unpin in the pop-up menu.
The conversation will instantly drop back down into the standard, scrolling list of text messages based on when the last message was sent or received.