Google Messages now lets emoji trigger Screen Effects animations (Updated)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Screen Effects add some big screen-filling animations to your Google Messages chats. So far, Screen Effects have been activated by using specific text trigger phrases. Messages now appears to respond similarly when you send pairs of certain emoji. Update, March 25, 2025 (01:03 PM ET): We’ve been working to identify all the emoji pairs that manage to activate these full-screen animations, and here are the ones that we’re seeing trigger Screen Effects: Original article, March 24, 2025 (04:23 PM ET): Whether you’ve meant to or not, anyone using Google Messages for long enough has likely triggered one of the app’s Screen Effects — those full-screen animations you’d see when entering specific phrases into your chat. Google first announced the feature with 15+ animations, and we later managed to uncover some two dozen. But so far, it’s looked like the only way to activate these has been by typing in one of those associated trigger phrases. Now i ... Read full article.