Home for the holidays? Use this iOS 26 feature to make dinner plans with friends

The holidays can be a good time to connect with friends and family, and you can do this over dinner. However, it can be difficult to know what to eat or where to go. Fortunately, Polls feature in Messages on your device iPhone You can help your crew vote on where to go.

Apple provided side-by-side polls iOS 26 in September. With polls, you can create a poll in a group chat where everyone can vote on a specific action or decision, such as where to go to dinner. This way, all chat members can have an opinion, instead of just the loudest voices.

Here’s how to create a poll in Messages and what you should know about this feature.

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How to create a poll in Messages

1. Open Messages and tap Chat.
2. Click on the plus sign (+) The button to the left of the text box.
3. handle Opinion polls.

A box with it Choice 1, Choice 2 and Choice 3 It will appear above your text box. Click on Choice 1and you can enter what this option means for your poll. Once you finish filling it out, press the back button on your keyboard, and you will automatically be taken to the line Choice 2. You can have between two and 12 options per survey.

Once you’ve finished filling out your choices, you can write a message to send with your poll to provide additional information about sending the poll to the group, and people will be able to vote on their choice.

What else you should know about in-message polls

If someone has created a survey in Messages and you don’t see the option you want to consider, you can add them to the survey. handle Add option Below the survey, you can add another option or two, as long as there is room for them. Remember that you can only have 12 options in a survey.

Voting in the poll is easy. Just tap on your selection, and that option will be illuminated. However, you can vote for as many choices as you like, but you can only cast one vote for each choice. So it’s like a survey that says, “Select all that apply.” This means that a poll can include more votes than people in the chat. There does not appear to be a way to limit the number of votes a person can cast otherwise.

When an option receives a vote, that option will grow relative to the other options like a bar chart. This way, you can easily see which option is winning at a glance.

Who votes for which option is not hidden either. When you vote for an option, a picture of your Apple ID will appear next to that option. Anyone in the chat can also long-press on the poll and tap the option Survey details To know who voted for which option and who has not voted yet. This may give you a chance to remind someone to vote if they forget or get distracted. Or it could be a fun way to poke fun at your friend Josh, who voted to eat pizza five nights in a row — one can’t live on pizza alone, mate.

For more iOS news, here’s everything you should know iOS 26.2-New features included in iOS 26.1 and My review of iOS 26. You can also check our website iOS 26 cheat sheet.