In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Samsung Messages app is dying. Samsung has officially confirmed that it will shut down the app in July 2026, with Google Messages serving as the default.
The company has already started informing users that they will no longer be able to send messages through Samsung Messages (except for emergency services or contacts), and the app will also no longer be available to download from the Galaxy Store. It’s worth noting that you can’t install Samsung Messages on the Galaxy S26 series you already have.
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No Gemini clutter will dominate your screen space
Although this sounds useful in theory, it also means that Gemini sits right next to your personal chat. You can disable it from Settings, but I’m not entirely comfortable with integrating an AI assistant so tightly into an app that handles my private conversations.
With Samsung Messages, you won’t have to deal with any of this. It was a simple, easy-to-use RCS messaging app, with no AI features taking up space or attention.
More chat customization options now built-in
One thing Android users are accustomed to is customization, and Samsung Messages has mastered it perfectly. The app lets you make changes to almost everything, from changing chat colors and message bubble colors to adjusting contrast, applying theme-based styles, and even using a wallpaper-based color palette.
Google Messages, on the other hand, seems pretty weak in comparison. You only get light and dark themes out of the box, whereas Google is working While adding more chat themes, this feature is still not widely available (even in the beta channel).
So if you’re relying on deep customization in Samsung Messages, this is something you’ll definitely miss when you move to Google Messages.
Another big part of Samsung Messages, and probably the most important feature in my opinion, is message classification. Just like you can organize emails in Gmail into different tabs like Primary, Updates, Social or Promotions, Samsung Messages lets you do something similar with your text.
You can group different senders into specific categories. For example, you can put all your bank and card messages in the financial category, put your close contacts in the primary category, and even create categories for things like food delivery or shopping updates. This makes managing messages much easier.
However, Google Messages does not offer this. while it is Features like trash section were added, yet there is no way to properly categorize messages by sender. It seems like Google could easily make some improvements with AI (even if it raises some privacy questions), but for now, this is a big feature missing from Google Messages.
Google Messages is not a bad RCS alternative
With the Samsung Messages app shutting down in July 2026, the brand is asking users to switch to Google Messages as the default messaging app on their phones.
And while it’s not a like-for-like replacement, it’s currently the only SMS app on Android Fully supports RCS. So if RCS texting with features like high-quality media sharing, typing indicators, stickers, and emoji reactions matters to you, then Google Messages is the app you need to go with.
That said, Google Messages isn’t a bad app in itself. There are some customization options available, and similar to Samsung Messages, you can disable Gemini from Settings if you don’t want AI in your chats.
It also includes features like Messages for Web, which is useful for entering OTPs on your laptop, and advanced spam protection that isn’t available in Samsung Messages.
Google Messages has improved a lot in the last few months
The reason I’m not entirely disappointed with Samsung Messages’ demise is that Google has been making a real effort to improve its Messages app recently.
We’ve seen additional changes like small but useful tools like Trash folder to recover deleted chats Ability to copy specific parts of a message, and mark RCS notifications as read from Wear OS. And all these updates have come recently.
These updates show that Google is actively working to improve the Messages app not only for Samsung Galaxy users but for Android users as a whole.
