5 missing features that would make it better

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

We saw last week that Google’s working on another pretty substantial update to Messages: more in-depth customization, allowing users to build custom chat themes similarly to the soon-to-be-retired Samsung Messages app. It’s another in a line of pretty substantial improvements Google’s chat app has seen lately — but there are still improvements Messages could make. Here are five features Google Messages should adopt.

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

Plenty of other messaging services, from iMessage to WhatsApp and even Google Chat, do allow text formatting. Oddly enough, Gemini is able to format text using markup when accessed through Google Messages, but users aren’t able to do the same in any context. Let me text in italics, Google. RCS 4.0 might solve it, and I can’t wait.

Plenty of content on our phones is gated behind extra security. From banking apps to the Locked Folder in Google Photos to Android’s built-in private space that tucks whole apps behind a second lock screen, we’ve come to expect the option to double down on keeping sensitive info hidden from anyone who might get their hands on our phones.

Google Messages should follow suit here with the option to lock chats behind an extra layer of security. The feature could work the way it does in WhatsApp, where users can lock selected chats using their screen lock or a separate passcode. WhatsApp’s locked chats are cordoned off in their own folder, and notifications for new messages in those chats don’t include any info about the contents of messages.

Before we get locked chats in their own separate space, though, Messages could use some folder options. Some of the building blocks are there already: 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’re not able to organize chats 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 (way back in 2020), it’s handy for keeping personal, work, and group chats organized — but you can group your chats however you want. Ideally, Google Messages would offer Gmail-style automatic filter categorization while also letting users define and manage their own folders if they choose.

Another advanced privacy feature Google’s yet to catch up to is self-destructing messages. Other messaging platforms like Signal and Telegram provide options to send messages that are only readable for a predetermined period of time, helping ensure sensitive info doesn’t end up accessible to people you didn’t intend to see it.

Locked chats would be a more sensible privacy measure for entire conversations you want to keep under wraps, 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 time would be great.

Google Messages recently rolled out the capability to share your real-time location with others, with options to share where you are for an hour, a day, or a custom duration of any other length. That’s a great feature, but iOS users have access to a related feature I’d like to see Google adopt.

In Apple Messages, users can set up what Apple calls a “Check In.” These check-ins allow users to automatically notify selected contacts when their phone reaches a designated location — and if it’s not in that location by a chosen time, contacts will be notified of that, too. Essentially, the feature automates the text me when you get there process.

Sharing your live location accomplishes a similar goal, but if all you want is to let someone know when you arrive at your destination, up-to-the-second location data is overkill. The two features really could, and should, coexist.

More new features, coming… eventually

The next iteration of the RCS standard, version 4.0, was finalized just a few weeks ago. RCS 4.0 supports quite a few new features, including built-in video calling, higher-quality media, and even text formatting options (finally). It’s on Google to implement those features, but we don’t have any reason to think it won’t.

But as substantial an update RCS 4.0 is, it only ticks one of my boxes here. Other features — locked chats, chat categorization, and automated check-ins — aren’t covered. Google could implement all of these on its own to make Messages a more modern, more competitive messaging platform, though. None of them requires support outside Messages. Disappearing messages might have to be a perk for chats where everyone is texting from the Google Messages app, but that beats not having the feature at all.

Given the pace of development Google Messages has seen over the past couple of years, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see some of these options cropping up in the months and years ahead.