Text message box not shrinking

My text message box increases in size the more I type, to the point where it takes up my whole screen and I am unable to shrink or minimize the text message box to see previous texts.

Below I will add photos showing precisely what I mean. I will also include the exact text in my example text message to make it easier to read.

“Okay so the problem is when you keep typing and typing and typing and typing. Maybe you're telling a friend about a movie, talking to partner about day, venting to someone about something stressful.

Maybe you like to have multiple topics of conversation at once, but instead of sending a million texts resulting in a million notifications for you and your friend, you and your friend break up texts by entering in between different topics to send one long text that has multiple topics in it.

And the problem is the message box keeps getting larger and larger. It doesn't shrink on its own anymore. That little plus sign, no help. You can scroll down and let the keyboard disappear, but once your text message gets long enough, the message box will take up the entire screen. What if you need to check the previous conversation before you hit send?

But when you scroll down to make the keyboard disappear, the text message box has now taken over your entire screen. This is ridiculous. All you need to do Apple is add an option in the + plus menu to shrink the text message box. That's all. So simple. Or, the size the message box can reach while the keyboard is still on screen, when you scroll down to make the keyboard disappear, just have the text message box remain that size. It's still too large, it takes up at least half the screen, but at least then you could actually look back at the previous conversation in your texts, whether or not you have a long text message in the box.

Also the "select all" button is being glitchy for me. When I hit

"select all", if I try to scroll up to make sure it highlighted everything or to change it so it highlights a bit less than all, it bounces between keyboard and no keyboard and selected or not selected and I can't actually use the "select all" button in long text messages. If I want to select everything, I have to select one word and then drag my finger down. But it doesn't automatically keep scrolling down. I have to slide my thumb along the screen to scroll down, re-select the drag line, drag my thumb to the new button of the text message box, then repeat as many times as necessary. Why? Any other app or program will automatically keep scrolling when you're dragging the select line to the bottom of the screen. Why not text messages??

So seriously. Please do something to fix the text message box. Make it possible to shrink it. My old phone, probably lOS 15 or lower, it had a shrink message box function. Why doesn't my newer "better" phone? I am currently at IOS 17.”

Please Apple. Fix this. I use text messages all the time. And this drives me crazy. And I’m not the only one. Please. I’ve used Apple products for years, and I love iPhones. But I hate this problem.

If anyone has found a way to fix this, please let me know. I know I can select all, cut the text, check messages, and re-paste and edit it. Or type in notes first before pasting it into messages. But that’s ridiculously annoying. So if there’s an actual fix, I would love to know.

Thank you.