GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
Google’s had a messy relationship with messaging, with now-defunct platforms like Hangouts and Allo failing to achieve the kind of relevance and staying power enjoyed by competing services like iMessage and WhatsApp. In recent years, though, the company has consistently thrown its weight behind its RCS and SMS client Google Messages, which has seen regular updates and feature additions and become Android’s default messaging app.
We saw last week that Google’s working on another pretty substantial update to Messages: more in-depth customization, allowing users to build custom chat themes similarly to the soon-to-be-retired Samsung Messages app. It’s another in a line of pretty substantial improvements Google’s chat app has seen lately — but there are still improvements Messages could make. Here are five features Google Messages should adopt.
Which of these features do you most want Google Messages to add? 30 votes Text formatting 33 % Passcode-protected chats 13 % Chat folders 10 % Disappearing messages 20 % iOS-style Check Ins 13 % Something else (leave a comment) 10 %
Text formatting
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority Formatting text in Google Chat
Starting with the basics here: Google Messages doesn’t offer text formatting, meaning you can’t send a message containing bold, italic, or underlined text. This limits your options when it comes to conveying a specific tone — you’ve got emojis and caps lock, but not much else.
Let me text in italics, Google.
Plenty of other messaging services, from iMessage to WhatsApp and even Google Chat, do allow text formatting. Oddly enough, Gemini is able to format text using markup when accessed through Google Messages, but users aren’t able to do the same in any context. Let me text in italics, Google. RCS 4.0 might solve it, and I can’t wait.
Locked chats
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