As the default messaging app onSamsung Galaxyand Google Pixel smartphones, Google Messages comes packed to the hilt with features, with the company recently taking upon itself tomake some visual changesto the app. Carrying on with this trend, we’ve now come across another under-development feature for the Messages app — animated message reactions. While there’s already some minor animation involved when you react to a message with the usual selection of emoji, this hidden option in Messages adds a bit more flair to the mix.
These new animations were hidden within Google Messages beta (20231121_01_RC00) and could be enabled by flipping a few flags, as per reliable sourceAssembleDebugwriting forSpAndroid. Each animation is unique and adds more flavor to your chats, though it currently seems to be limited to a few emoji options that pop up while long pressing a text.
As AssembleDebug rightly notes, these animations aren’t unlike what we’ve seen on chat apps like Telegram, although Google’s animations appear to be markedly larger on the screen. I particularly like the use of an umbrella when reacting with the sad/crying emoji, as shown in the video below.
Since these features required the manual enabling of flags, it’s hard to say how far out it is from reaching the stable version of Google Messages. AssembleDebug didn’t specify the flags that were flipped to make these new animations appear, either. Nevertheless, this is a handy addition to Google Messages and one that would add a bit more emotion to your everyday conversations.
The Messages team has been relatively busy over the past several months with regard to minor feature additions. We saw thewider rollout of account-based device pairing, making it infinitely easier to access chats on multiple devices, such as laptops and tablets. More recently, Google Messages was testing a way to suppress background noise in voice notes by using anew “Noise Cancellation” button, as revealed by AssembleDebug.
Meanwhile, ardent backers of RCS-based messaging, including Google, received some good news recently following Apple’sdecision to support RCS in 2024, enabling seamless and secure texting between iPhone and Android users while also (hopefully) ending the blue vs green bubble debate for good. However, the iPhone maker may have taken this call based onpressure from the European Commissionand not due toGoogle’s aggressive ad campaignsor Nothing’snow-infamousworkaround. Similarly, European regulators were also instrumental in getting Apple to (finally) adopt USB-C for iPhones this year, which has been a staple feature on some of thebest Android phonesfor a few years now.
