How to reveal iOS 5 iMessages timestamps!

Sometimes I come back to iMessages on my iPod after having received multiple messages from the same sender, and want to know the time that a particular message was sent.

Timestamps of messages can be found with a swipe in iOS 7. In iOS 5 (and, I suspect, iOS 6), there is also a way to find the timestamp of any message in an iMessages conversation. In some cases you must delete surrounding messages, but you could copy their content elsewhere first (long-press or double-tap a message, and Copy), if you needed it (I myself rarely need such).

(1) If the message for which you want the timestamp is from "today" (after the most recent midnight), then:

(1a) If it is the last message in the conversation, you can go ("back") to the Messages list to see its timestamp.

(1b) If it is not the last message in your conversation, then:

(1bi) If it contains a string which isn't found among the conversation's other currently loaded messages (or if found chronologically first in your target message), go to the Messages list, search for that string, and you will see the intraday (hours:minutes and AM/PM) timestamp there. As needed, you can "Load Earlier Messages" at the top of a conversation; those are cleared by quitting and loading the iMessages app again.

(1bii) Delete other, later messages from the bottom up, until it newly becomes the last message in the conversation, then see (1a) above.

All of the above ideas except for (1bii) were mentioned on http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/32408/can-messages-display-the-timestamp-of-every-incoming-message, which was the best solution I had found before doing the investigation which led to this blog entry.

The next method is not limited to messages from "today".  Every message has timestamp data, but iMessages only shows that to you under certain conditions.

When you start exchanging messages, that delineates the beginning of what I call a "snippet", which is a piece of your conversation (someone else referred to this as a "chunk"). iMessages identifies that with a center-justified snippet header which shows both the date and time. After some period of inactivity (15 minutes? That's someone else's guess; I didn't research it.), iMessages will end that snippet. Subsequent messages between you and the other party will generate a new snippet with its own snippet header.

By deleting earlier messages in a snippet, you can update the snippet header to show the timestamp of the first remaining message in the snippet. Not exactly obvious, but that's how you can find the timestamp of any message, no matter how old.

Paste multiple images from Photos app into a single e-mail message

11/27/12: Updated, after additional testing in which I discovered a second way to copy and paste multiple images.
11/28/12: Updated again, after additional testing in which I discovered a third way to copy and paste multiple images.

On my iPod, skimming through iPad 2: The Missing Manual, which I'd borrowed from the library as a Kindle e-book, I was surprised to discover that in the iOS Photos app, you can copy multiple images and paste them successively into a single e-mail message (or perhaps into any app that can accept them). This copy feature is listed on page 56 of Apple's iPod touch iOS 5 user guide PDF file, but even had I read that file cover to cover, which I did not do, I could easily have missed that. I suspect this capability was also available in iOS 4, as well, or maybe even earlier.

Previously, I would select each image in turn, then send each one as a separate e-mail message using the arrow-emerging-from-rectangle button. It would have been better and clearer for the recipient had all the images been in a single e-mail message, with intermingled explanatory text as appropriate.

Three options:

(1) If you don't already know the entire group of images you want to copy, you can copy one at a time in Camera Roll by using tap-hold on a single image until "Copy" appears. Tap that, switch back to Mail, and paste it into a message wherever you want.

(2) If you know the entire group of images you want to copy (and subsequently explicitly paste), in Camera Roll tap the arrow-emerging-from-rectangle button. Tap on each image you want so that it shows it's been selected with a checkmark in a red circle (tap again to de-select it), then tap the Copy button at the bottom. Switch back to Mail, and paste them all into a message wherever you want. They apparently get pasted in their order in Camera Roll, not the order in which you selected them.

(3) If you know the entire group of images you want to mail directly from the Camera Roll, tap the arrow-emerging-from-rectangle button. Tap on each image you want so that it shows it's been selected with a checkmark in a red circle (tap again to de-select it), then tap the Share button at the bottom. Tap the Email button (Message [for iMessages] and Print are also options). Mail capability will be invoked, with the images copied into the message area in their Camera Roll order.


(1) and (2) may come in most handy if you have already started writing an e-mail message and only later realize you want to paste in one or more images.

I tend not to work with images much; perhaps all the above is common knowledge for people who work with images frequently.


Apparently iOS 6 allows direct inclusion of photos or video into e-mail messages, presumably without having to leave the Mail app, obviating the need to switch between it and the Photos app. However, primarily due to iOS 6's loss of the ability to display the entirety of the text of a podcast's description (which I mentioned here), I will be sticking with iOS 5 for as long as I possibly can.