How do you turn off the iOS 11 feature of AUTOMATICALLY sending confetti? When you type “congratulations” or “congrats”, iMessage (iOS 11 is the first time I noticed this) automatically sends that confetti animation whether you want it or not. Same goes with the balloon animation when you type “happy birthday”. (Don’t know if any other specific phrases but there may be more)

How do you turn off these auto animations? I’m not talking about the manual feature of sending animations. I know about that. This is done automatically without prompting when you type the magic words.
You can’t turn it off universally for sending and receiving, but you can block it along with other motion on your device.

Open Settings app > General > Accessibility - turn on "Reduce Motion" and turn off "Auto-Play Message Effects"



If the receiver has a device running iOS 9 for example he/she won’t be able to see it and won’t receive any readable text that a special effect was used.