How do I change the name of a group text / discussion in Messages?

You have to be the one to start the group.

The Group Chat Names feature in iMessage is one of the worst designed features that Apple has ever released. The fact that anyone in the group can rename it and that it renames on the phones of all users or members of the group is ridiculous.

This should be a per-user feature that changes the group name on only the phone of the user entering the name without making any changes to the phones of the other users. In large groups, several users may have different ways of classifying groups and what makes sense to one user may not make sense to others, or different groups may be given the same or similar names by different members making a user that is in both groups unable to tell which is which without going into each one. Group messaging has become frustrating and nearly impossible to use.

Using group chats has become a quick way to communicate with coworkers or groups of customers, and as a small business owner I do this constantly. However, group names have made it nearly impossible to locate groups, and the ability of others in the group to effectively change a setting on my phone has the potential to create some very embarrassing or financially devastating issues. Imagine having someone in the group naming it something vulgar and then having that pop up on my phone lock screen while showing something to another customer (like project photos or pricing information). Also, if several users start trying to be cute and start changing the group name back and forth, it becomes increasingly difficult to FIND the group when I have an important message to send.

After a lengthy chat with tech support at Apple last night, the only options given were to “tell people in the group not to add a name” or to turn off iMessage and create an MMS chat. In business use, it is highly inappropriate for me to “tell” a group of customers what they can and can’t do, and I will not go down that road. Turning off iMessage is effectively losing many of the features that make group chatting an effective business tool for exchanging ideas in real time.

The naming of groups is not a bad idea, in that it would allow users to sort groups by topic or family, work, etc. But it is badly implemented in that it is a “universal” setting across all members of the group. One user may have prefer to sort groups by topic, while another may prefer to go by names. It also seems to be a potential security hole that could be exploited by a disgruntled member of the group to cause annoyance or frustration to the other members. It also seems to be the only setting on the iPhone that is open to anyone else to change without my explicit permission. This feature is not well designed, and needs to at minimum come with the ability to turn it off. The best case scenario would be to close the universality of it and allow Private naming of groups that only affect the phone of the user entering the name, while changing nothing on the phones of the other users.

To me, this has become an annoying and urgent issue, which deserves immediate attention and resolution. I have been using iPhones for years, and this is the first “feature” that has become so frustrating as to make me seriously consider switching to Android, and a quick search of forums on the web shows that I am not alone in this sentiment.

iPhone 6 Plus 128GB user

I have iOS 10 with the iPhone 6s and it won't let me change the name. Also I was the one that created the group text.