What "Emphasized an Image" Means on iPhone and Android

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Decipher these “emphasized” messages in no time

Co-authored by Eric McClure

Last Updated: September 23, 2024 Fact Checked

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Why You Received an “Emphasized an Image” Message

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“Emphasized an Image” & “!!” Meaning

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How do Tapbacks and Reactions work on iPhone?

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Do Android phones have reactions?

If you’re an Android user, you’ve undoubtedly received an odd “Emphasized an image” or “Emphasized a video” message at some point. If you’re curious about what these messages mean and where they come from, we’ve got you covered! This quirk is a side effect of iPhone and Android incompatibility. Basically, an iPhone user reacted to an image or video with the “!!” emoji and it’s not showing up on your screen. We’ll explain why and break down what’s going on here.

What Does “Emphasized an Image” Mean?

“Emphasized an image” appears when iPhone users select the “!!” reaction in a conversation with an Android user. Since the iPhone reactions appear to work fine on text messages but not on photos or videos, Android users will typically only see “Emphasized a video” or “Emphasized an image” when talking to iPhone users.

Section 1 of 4:

Why You Received an “Emphasized an Image” Message

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“Emphasized an image” means someone with an iPhone reacted to your image. Android and iOS aren’t perfectly compatible, so this message is a communication quirk that occurs when iPhone users react to an image using the iPhone’s Tapback feature. Basically, your contact reacted to your image with a “!!” emoji. But, since Android doesn’t use the same emojis or reactions, it doesn’t appear correctly on the Android screen. Instead, you’ll see “Emphasized an image” or “Emphasized a video.” ^{[1]
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- Just to clarify, if you see a message that reads “Emphasized…” in a convo with an iPhone user, they didn’t type that out. This text is an automated response you see when they press the “!!” reaction to a video or image.
- Why do I see the “!!” on text messages then? For reasons that only Tim Cook could possibly understand, the iPhone reactions work on text-only messages on most newer Android phones. If you’ve got an older phone, however, you may still see “Emphasized a message” when an iPhone user reacts with “!!” to one of your texts.

Section 2 of 4:

What does the “emphasized” or “!!” reaction mean?

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“Emphasizing” correlates to the !! reaction, expressing excitement or shock. If you see that someone “emphasized” an image, this means that they selected the “!!” reaction. If they react with a ❤️ (heart emoji), you’ll see “Loved an image.” If they use a ❓(question mark emoji), you’ll see “Questioned a video.” The “Emphasized” message only appears for the ‼️ (double question mark emoji).
- The ‼️ (double question mark emoji) is typically used to indicate surprise. However, it could also be used to express urgency. The !! reaction is extremely context-dependent, so take what you know about the person using it into account when assessing what they mean.
- For example, if you shared a photo of yourself on vacation, someone might use the !! reaction to subtly say “Wow, you look good!” or, “Boy, that looks like a lot of fun!”
- Someone might also use the !! reaction if you share a video of your family to express joy about how much fun it looks like everyone is having.