Messages by Google is the official Google app for texting over RCS with fallback to SMS/MMS. Get more done in your messages with one-tap calendar reminders and emoji replies, and keep your conversations secure with spam protection and end-to-end encryption so that you can focus on connecting with the people and businesses you care about — no matter what device they use.
See when friends are typing or when they have read your message, share high-quality images and videos, easily add people to a group chat, and experience an all-around richer messaging experience.
End-to-end encryption is a security method that keeps your eligible communications secure, so no one (including Google and third parties) can read or view your messages or attachments.
Receive warnings about suspected spam and unsafe websites. Easily block and report potential spammers to help stop unwanted and fraudulent messages.
Share high-quality videos directly from your Google Photos library.
Messages can be automatically sorted into personal and business categories. Nudge replies remind you to follow up on a message, and birthday reminders make sure you send well wishes on time.
Keep the conversation going no matter what device you’re on. Chat with friends from your phone, computer, Android tablet, or smart watch with the Messages app.
Access suggested replies, one-tap calendar reminders, link sharing, and more without leaving your message. Reply quicker and get more out of your conversations with smart actions.
Suggested responses, gifs, and emojis make conversations faster and more fun. Reply back to messages with just a tap and keep the conversation going.
Great, then not so much.. I’ve used the app on my phone for about two years with minimal issues. However over the past few days, the app crashes every time I try to open it. I’ve restarted my phone as well as uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and it still crashes. I can work around it, sort of (go to messages Contacts>Messages, share a photo or link, etc.), but that’s obnoxious. I’m kind of over it.
Good and it works. It doesn’t allow you to write your message before selecting or write a recipient number. I don’t like that. Other problem I see is that you have to go to settings to send a group text. In a group text respond it is visible for everyone, that’s a little annoying but you can fix that by going to the setting again. The main issue I have with this app is pictures and gifs I am sending become blurry when it arrives to the recipient phone. My other messaging apps works great.
The most recent rollout destroyed voice messaging. Limiting voice messages to 2 minutes? For what? On top of having to hold the microphone button down an extra 5 seconds so it doesn’t keep cutting off the end of the voice message. If you use this feature often, find a better app. I am rolling my update back to what worked. Never trust an auto-update when it comes to a Google developed app. No one can fix this. I’ve asked countless times. It’s so simple. Please. Fix voice messaging.
Something I think is quite interesting is how group chat texts will be slow to receive and send (and by that I mean usually it takes hours for texts to come in). When the texts do come in, it is always in the wrong order for both ends. I just recently switched Android’s and I’m still having a problem with this. Not only this, but if somebody else has an iPhone, you can’t react to texts or see if they read the texts. Other than that, it’s a great app. If given a chance, please look into this.
So far it has been a great app, had a couple issues in the past with the chat mode option saying the recipient was offline which was not the case and it would take too long to receive a notification saying message was not sent and force through SMS message which defeats the purpose of knowing if the message was received or read. I used to be able to set a different notification sound for each recipient and it has been disabled can you please fix this. thanks!!!
1. There seems to be no way to separate notifications for outgoing and incoming messages. Within settings from the app and the app manager there is one toggle button for hearing a noise for both incoming and outgoing. I need one for incoming, and never want my phone to make noise when I’m aware I’m doing something. This seems basic. I hope Google will fix it. 2. There is a lot of white space between lines of text in this app, like 1.5ish, when it could be 1.0 to show more text on the screen.
From the moment I downloaded the app it has been glitchy or just keeps crashing. My friend uses it and thought I’d give it a try, but will be deleting it. Terrible. The message threads don’t even open up 99% of the time. It takes like 2 minutes for the thread to appear when you open a text. Never had a moment where it actually worked for longer than 30 seconds. Total garbage. If I could give zero stars I would.
It works ok, but since the recent update, the outgoing message sound (when a text is sent to someone) is weird and annoying. This issue was mentioned in another review. The previous sound was more sophisticated. Please change that detail back; it didn’t need improving. Update: Recently I’ve noticed that the incoming message notification sound is often not my specific phone setting, but instead it’s a generic sound from within the app. This seems to happen when the app is open and I’m texting.
Really barebones app that doesn’t even do the basics well. Examples: Audio messages will just stop playing sometimes and I have to start them over. There isn’t any obvious way to 2x message play back (pretty sure there’s not). When I compose a new message and add people, it asks me to name the group every single time, even if I have a group name already. Lots of other annoyances but I’m almost at the character limit.
I would rate higher if my messages would stop randomly disappearing. I’ll be in the middle of a conversation, and all previous texts in that thread will just disappear, like I’ve never texted that person before. It’s extremely frustrating, as there’s seemingly no way to get those messages back, many of which were very important. Wish that would be fixed or some sort of retrieval method added, as it’s happened to me multiple times now. I’ve reset the cache multiple times.
Phone is no longer receiving group chats or able to send pictures after update. It’s rather disappointing that this bug has not been fixed. I’ve looked into every possible option like updating my operating system, making sure that my settings were correct, and having my friends check to see if their systems were up to date and on the right setting. With all of that ruled out the only explanation left is that the update has caused an issue. Update; Tried solutions still not working
Its okay. I wish it was more customizable. That’s my main reason for having a pixel phone. If you could have ringtones per person for example, change the background, change the look of the bubbles etc. And the 2 mins voice note change was devastating. As someone who doesn’t like to talk on the phone. This is how I communicate with my friends. I’m used to being able to send 10 minute messages but now it keeps cutting off and I’m not always paying attention so I don’t know where it stopped etc.
It’s just okay. About a month ago, we had some issues with it where we were having to force messages through by SMS. We couldn’t figure it out. Chat features were connected, stable connection, but it kept saying messages either couldn’t be delivered or the recipient was offline for some reason when that wasn’t the case at all. We ended up having to go to the actual settings for the phones, select apps, find Messages, and then clear all data and the cache, then reset everything. Very frustrating.
Completely satisfied with this app. It doesn’t have many of the optional themes and bells and whistles of other apps… which is perfectly fine with me. But my favorite feature of Messages is the “companion” app available for Windows. It makes it easy to type long messages or share photos, videos , URLs, etc… directly from my laptop.
About 8 months ago, out of the blue, I stopped being able to send videos through messages. (Pics and multiple pics still work.) Sometimes it also randomly restarts. I’ve tried lots of things but have yet to resolve. Otherwise, I’m pleased … especially since now the “reactions” are more compatible with iPhones.
This latest update has screwed up everything. I can’t even sent videos that I take inside the app it’s telling me it’s too large to send. Not sure how since I created the video from messages. Voice text is misinterpreting what I’m saying as well and screwing up basic words. Also not able to change the colors of the bubbles anymore. I uninstalled and then updated it and it worked for about 30 minutes then reverted back to the issues. Please fix and I’ll update my review back to 5 stars.
I’m at the final straw with this app because it has so many bugs. Now I’m getting incoming text messages that appear for a split second and then disappear entirely forever. The syncing between my phone and web browser is also terrible and only syncs about half the messages, but I could look past that. When I first signed in on my new Pixel and it took over 8 days and constantly draining my battery to sync my phone with my history, I could look past it. But now I’m done.
I’ve loved using this app until recently. Just in the last week it won’t let me send any videos. It already was annoying that it would force me to trim a video to 15 seconds that would normally send via text no problem in other apps. But now even after it trims the video I get the error that it cannot send because it can’t resize the video. Very frustrating.
One star. This used a good app for years, but not anymore. Messaging has become very unreliable. Sometimes RCS messages aren’t sent and “automatic” fall back to SMS doesn’t work. Sometimes messages appear to be sent but they’re never received. I’m looking at other options. *Edit* to add:. I tried the Google recommendations to clear cache, uninstall/reinstall, etc. Nothing helped. *Edit 2*: updates to the app in the past 1-2 months have fixed the problems I was having. Four stars for now.
As with most Google software, lots of bugs, they keep adding features and not fixing bugs. App often says there are unread messages when there are no unread messages. This is one of the downsides of Android versus Apple, lack of focus on quality but it has improved over the last few years. Edit: in all fairness the prompt Google reply and the good features warrant a higher star rating, the problem goes away by rebooting the phone.
A serious improvement is needed on the sending of images and videos. It’s 2023, not 2011, reducing the quality and file size of images and videos for sending is completely unnecessary as storage space increases and the upgrade to 5G. The pictures and videos sent and received on Android are ruined and in miserable quality. We could really use an upgrade to allow sending and receiving full resolution media, just like Apple, they win on this issue let’s go. Please improve.
For many years, great. However, with last update, it SUCKS! All of a sudden there is a limit on length of TXT. A Major step backwards in TXTing. AND after all these years, can’t send or receive Photos, Screenshots, etc. Google to find a fix and it tells you to look for Settings that don’t exist! SUCKS.
Great app with lots of useful features, the interface os smooth and easy to use, and the settings are thoughtfully laid out. My only complaint with this app is the lack of customization, for example there are only two themse to choose from. I would love to see more theme options, having the ability to have the messages theme follow what ever theme Is on the phone would be great as well.
Relatively simple and basic, compared to other messages apps. I would like to request some more features. It would be nice to have an options to configure a different sound for incoming messages either per each chat or at least for the entire app. And it would be really useful to have an option to repeat the notification for unread messages. Thank you.
I have had ongoing issues with this app. If I delete more than one set of messages, it starts acting up and won’t let me send or receive messages. It will also freeze up or kick me off the app. It was saying doing work in background, now it keeps saying it’s syncing, it has been doing this for almost 24 hours now. I have tried several things to fix this, and still having issues. I reached out to support and nothing. Super frustrating. One star because it won’t let me post without marking.
I was under the impression that “Schedule Send” didn’t work; it turns out that all I needed to do was tap Send again once it was scheduled. This feature stumped everyone in my family, so maybe a “tap Send” hint should be added. (But to be fair, this is something that can be resolved with a quick Google search) Anyways, this app is fantastic. 5 stars.
I love this messaging app. I like that it’s End to End encrypted, it’s got good features and is easy to customize and use. But what good are those things if the app won’t connect to chat services? I’ve disabled, re-enabled, rebooted, uninstalled, re-installed, cleared cache etc. Nothing. It’s never had this issue before. It just says “Setting Up” Chat Services.
I had to uninstall and use an old version, since the app update from a few months back removed all the settings listed under Options of a message thread, which means there is no way to change the notification sound (or lack of sound) on a thread. I’ve been suffering through group text message interruptions while at work because Google broke the app. This is easily the most important feature on my phone – silencing text message threads. If it becomes a permanent issue I will switch to Apple.
This app has not been an issue for the first year. But now all of a sudden, my voice-to-text will just abruptly stop recording for no reason, the app freezes, every time I turn off settings they magically turn themselves back on like checking “only send sms/MMS messages bc that other feature doesn’t work well, “don’t bubble”, & last integration w infotainment systems needs work. There really should be a way you can let users revert back to previous version, you guys are screwing up a lot of ppl
The stickers stopped working a long time ago and now the chatting feature isn’t working at all. I can only send and receive messages as SMS and MMS, which defeats the whole point is using this app. I have updated the app, restarted my phone, cleared cache, uninstalled and reinstalled. It is happening to other people who also use this app. It’s a mess.
Anytime I try to text my wife I get “Recipient may be offline, tap for options,” even when she’s sitting right next to me. Her phone does the same thing when texting me. Our end-to-end encryption matches, no updates pending, wifi connection on and off. The only way we can text is by tapping the message and sending as SMS, meaning sending a text takes twice as long as it normally should. This app has turned to trash the last few months, progressively getting worse.
Great messenging app. Has a lot of great features Update: there is a bug on Android 12 where new messages sometimes don’t appear in the app itself but appear in the notifications tray. This can be fixed by opening the all apps button and closing the messages app and then relaunching it. Then the new messages will be displayed. It seems random unfortunately with no obvious sign of cause. Edit: this is still an issue. Chat features go offline randomly. Tried the steps before without success
Not bad. The appearance customization that is set by the user, is not very satisfying, because there’s not much to customize. There are some options like copying codes in the floating notifications, but sometimes, it’s not smart enough to find the code, but other messenger apps are quiet smart. I just have to use this app because my phone’s security restricts the other apps, so I’m stuck with this one.
I am so frustrated with this app. I can’t change the things I want to in Settings. There’s tmi & settings for Chat Features but I don’t want Chat Features. I want to have just my incoming text messages show up so I don’t have to reread my outgoing messages and sift through them all to figure out who is texting me. But there is no way to select that seemingly simple option. It is so annoying. Plus I can’t seem to turn off the auto correct and more often than not it guesses wrong. Useless app.
Since your recent update, I am unable to delete multiple messages at a time. Somehow, that feature doesn’t exist anymore. Whenever I select a message it shows a line of emojis- why??? I can’t select another conversation without deselecting the previous one – how time consuming. 🙄 Please bring back the ability to delete multiple messages at a time!!! Also having problems with the app freezing. What’s up? I use to love using this app! 🙃
It’s works for the most part. The thing I can’t stand is the sound connected to outgoing messages. NOT THE NOTIFICATIONS!! I’m talking about the sound when you create the text and hit send. It’s dull and flaccid and sounds like an error. Was that the best the developer could do?? Because wow… Please add an option to turn off the sound or change it.
I feel like it’s a 2.5 cause the main job of a messaging/texting app is to send and receive texts. But it gets stuck in a sending look when it’s set to chat so I have to force it to change to text instead of messaging. But then the other person’s messages aren’t coming through. Idk if I’m using the beta and that’s why it seems so unstable and barely usable. Aside from that I don’t have much issues it’s customizable, I can change individual backgrounds and notifications.
This latest update does not allow me to attach photos directly from Google photos app, it automatically goes to Samsung Galaxy and I cannot fix it. It also allows you to only attach one picture at a time instead of selecting several at the same time. You have to go through the routine of clicking attachment, clicking gallery, clicking photos, then clicking on the one you want. Very frustrating.
Recent update has made message extremely unreliable. Before, you send a message and it is received. Now, you send a message and then 45 minutes later, it informs you that your message never sent. Then you click again and it sends. Whoever updated this app should be fired. The most basic app a phone can have a Google can’t figure out how to make it work on a basic simple level. Terrible. Embarrassing. Horrible. Used to work then they broke it. Delete this app.
The app has worked fine until recently. Messages won’t send. If I receive messages from others they are late. Sometimes I don’t get them at all. Yet, if I make a call or send someone else a text all of the messages that have been lost suddenly show up. It’s annoying. I even upgraded my phone due to this issue thinking my old phone was the problem. But nope. It’s this app apparently. Because it’s still happening.