5 missing features that would make it better

Google has had a messy relationship with messaging, with now-defunct platforms like Hangouts and Allo failing to gain the relevance and durability of competing services like iMessage and WhatsApp. However, in recent years, the company has consistently thrown its weight behind its RCS and SMS client Google Messages, which has seen regular updates and feature additions and has become Android’s default messaging app.

We saw last week that Google is working on another significant update to Messages: more in-depth customization, allowing users to create custom chat themes, similar to the soon-to-be-retired Samsung Messages app. This is another in a series of significant improvements we’ve seen in Google’s chat app recently – but Messages could still be improved. Here are five features Google Messages should adopt.

Start with the basics here: Google Messages doesn’t offer text formatting, which means you can’t send a message with bold, italic, or underlined text. This limits your options when it comes to conveying a specific tone — you have emojis and caps lock, but not much else.

Many other messaging services, from iMessage to WhatsApp and even Google Chat, allow text formatting. Strangely, Gemini is able to format text using markup when accessed via Google Messages, but users are not able to do so in any context. Let me text in italics, Google. RCS 4.0 may solve this, and I can’t wait.

A lot of the content on our phones is under extra security. From banking apps to locked folders in Google Photos to Android’s built-in Private Space, which hides entire apps behind a second lock screen, we expect the options to keep sensitive information hidden from anyone who might get their hands on our phones.

Google Messages should follow suit here too with the option to lock chats behind an extra layer of security. This feature can work as it does WhatsAppWhere users can lock selected chats using their screen lock or a different passcode. WhatsApp’s locked chats are locked in their own folder, and notifications of new messages in those chats don’t include any information about the content of the messages.

However, before we lock chats to their separate location, messages could use some folder options. Some of the building blocks are already in place: Messages automatically detects and categorizes spam and OTP texts, and the app recently got a trash folder where trashed texts hang out for a few weeks before disappearing forever. But you are not able to organize the chat manually.

Messaging services like WhatsApp and Telegram offer the option to group chats into folders. As Telegram explains in a blog post Announcing the feature’s debut (very early in 2020), it’s useful for keeping personal, work, and group chats organized — but you can group your chats as you wish. Ideally, Google Messages would offer Gmail-style automatic filter classification, while also letting users define and manage their own folders if they wish.

Another advanced privacy feature that Google has not yet adopted is self-destructing messages. Other messaging platforms like Signal and Telegram offer options to send messages that are readable only for a predetermined period of time, helping to ensure that sensitive information doesn’t reach people you didn’t intend to see it.

Locked chats would be a more sensible privacy measure for entire conversations you want to keep secret, but if you want to send a single sensitive message, the option to have that message disappear from the recipient’s device after a short period of time would be great.

Google Messages recently introduced the ability to share your real-time location with others, with options to share where you are for an hour, a day, or a custom period of any other length. This is a great feature, but while iOS users have access to a related feature, I would like Google to adopt it.

In Apple Messages, users can set up what Apple calls “check ins.” These check-ins allow users to automatically notify selected contacts when their phone reaches a specified location – and if it is not at that location by the chosen time, the contacts will be notified of this as well. Essentially, this feature automates Text Me when you get there in the process.

Sharing your live location serves a similar goal, but if you only want to tell someone when you arrive at your destination, the second location data is overkill. These two characteristics can and should actually co-exist.

More new features are coming…eventually

The next version of the RCS standard, version 4.0, was finalized just a few weeks ago. RCS 4.0 supports some new features, including built-in video calling, higher quality media, and even text formatting options. (At the end). It’s up to Google to implement those features, but we have no reason to think it won’t happen.

But as important an update as RCS 4.0 is, it only ticks one of my boxes here. Other features – locked chats, chat classification and automatic check-in – are not included. However, Google could implement all of these itself to make Messages a more modern, more competitive messaging platform. None of them require support outside of messages. Disappearing messages may be a benefit for chats where everyone is sending messages from the Google Messages app, but it’s better than not having the feature.

Given the pace of development of Google Messages over the past few years, I would be surprised if we didn’t see some of these alternatives emerge in the coming months and years.