Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Google Messages is rolling out @mentions in beta.
These @mentions allow users in group chats to tag one another without directly replying to each other’s messages.
The feature doesn’t seem to be universally available yet.
Though it launched as a simple SMS client more than a decade ago, Google Messages has grown over the years, adopting contemporary features like RCS, read receipts, and message editing. Now, the beta version’s picked up a new feature inspired by other modern chat apps: @mentions in group chats.
A post by user aniruddhdodiya on the Google Messages subreddit includes screenshots of the new @mention feature in action, apparently on a Pixel 10 running the latest beta version of Messages. We last saw evidence Google was working on this feature in September, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in the wild.
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Messages’ @mentions work similarly to tagged mentions in other chat apps. In a group chat, you can type an @ symbol to open a list of chat participants, from which you can choose the user you want to send an @mention message to. After choosing the user you want to tag, you can remove characters from that user’s name — for example, if you were to tag @Taylor Kerns, you could delete my last name to leave just @Taylor, without functionally affecting the @mention.
If you’ve been tagged in an @mention in any group chat you’re in, you’ll see a @ symbol on that chat in your Messages inbox. It’s not clear whether Messages has an option to only be notified of group chat messages in which you’re mentioned.
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