GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
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Customization is part of the fun of Android, or at least gives us a bit more sense of individualism. We spend plenty of time tweaking wallpapers, icons, and lock screens, so it makes sense that Google Messages is getting in on the act too. Its new chat themes let you give individual conversations their own look, and we wanted to know whether our readers were excited to try them out.
My colleague Joe Maring recently took the new chat themes for a spin, showing how you can change conversation colors, use one of Google’s preset wallpapers, or choose an image of your own. The themes work with RCS chats and are visible only on your end of the conversation, so you can make the family group chat as tasteful or as horrific as you like without anyone else knowing. In his article, Joe ran a poll to find out if you were looking forward to giving the feature a go. The results certainly weren’t the landslide Google might have hoped for. Over 2,500 of you voted in the poll, and we ended up with an almost equal split between the three options. The biggest group, at 36%, said they’d been waiting a long time for chat themes, while 33% were unsure but planned to give them a try. Just over 31% said they’d never use the feature.
While that doesn’t give us a clear consensus, it does mean that almost 70% of readers are either enthusiastic about chat themes or willing to try them. That suggests the feature has plenty of appeal, but it’s hardly something Google Messages users were universally crying out for. Then again, of the people who don’t believe they’ll use them, that could easily be because they don’t really use Google Messages at all. They might have another messaging app of choice, or they aren’t really texters in general. While the US and other regions are still keen on classic texting in its upgraded RCS form, we have plenty of readers elsewhere in the world. In many other countries, text messages are used for little more than delivery alerts or one-time passwords.
Some of you shared more in the comments section of Joe’s article, and the thread reflected the poll’s mixed reception. Kennyg357 said themes were “working and looking great” on their Galaxy Z Fold 6 and welcomed finally having the option on Android, while user Shear.it.up wanted more control, including a way to apply a theme to every contact at once and freely choose bubble colors. Others were less interested in the cosmetic upgrade, with Toddster1111 dismissing it as “meaningless window dressing.” It might be fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but so much of life is.
The feature had a bit of a bumpy launch, and some of you took the opportunity to air your complaints. Jandyfrix said they had been unable to set up a theme after two days of trying, while a couple of other readers reported that Messages freezes whenever they enter or leave the theme picker. These are known issues, and Google told us that availability may fluctuate as it optimizes the rollout and that it’s looking into reports of latency and freezing. I guess if you’ve waited this long for chat themes, you won’t mind waiting a little longer for Google to perfect them.
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