How to Display Character Counts in Messages

It’s often useful to know how long your SMS messages are, either for Twitter purposes, or to be sure that you’ll only be charged for the cost of one text. The iPhone does not show character counts by default, but it’s not hard to set-up.

Just go to the “Settings” menu, select “Messages,” then slide the “Character Count” toggle to “On.” Now when you are composing a text message — after you get to the end of the first line — you’ll see a running count of how many characters you’re sending on the right of the display, above the send button.