Message effects no longer work on my iPhone
There are settings that can enable or disable these. Even if you don't recall selecting this - checking that you're enabled would be a good first step.



My guess is at some point you enabled (intentionally or otherwise) the Reduce Motion option in your settings.

To check this:


Go to Settings > Accessibility
At the top, if Reduce Motion is enabled then the following effects won’t work at all:


Bubble effects
Full-screen effects

The other setting you can check on this screen is the Auto-Play Message Effects option. If this is on they play automatically, if it’s off you have to play them manually by tapping the circular arrow button below the message.


Further reading

The following pages on Apple's website may be of interest:


Use message effects with iMessage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Reduce screen motion on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch