apple patent face messaging

Everyone has done this before at least once: you jump into a chat app and quickly tap out a message, sending it off without a second thought before realizing one second too late that you sent it to the wrong person. Hopefully the ramifications weren’t too terrible for you, but even so it’s still an annoying little result of the smartphone era. Thankfully, Apple has a solution to this problem, which it outlines in a new patent awarded to the company on Thursday.

The patent, titled “Generation of a user interface based on contacts” would essentially solve this problem by slapping your contact’s face onto your phone as the background image for a conversation. The idea, which was first submitted to the U.S. Patent Office back in 2012, covers email, SMS, chat and more. Apple also outlines how a group chat would divide up the background into equal squares filled with the faces of participating contacts.

It’s a simple fix that could definitely help people avoid most, if not all, misdirected text messages. The idea of assigning a photo to every contact might not appeal to everyone, though you could probably pick a different images to represent your friends and families if your prefer. Of course there’s no guarantee we’ll ever see this patent become a reality, though this one definitely seems like it’s within the realm of possibility.