The Google Messages application should soon have a very convenient feature that will allow you to modify a message after sending it, like other messaging services. Enough to avoid typos and other misunderstandings!
With more than one billion monthly active users, Google Messages has established itself as one of the leading SMS, MMS and RCS applications. And that’s why the web giant had the bright idea to constantly strive to bring it closer to popular instant messaging services like WhatsApp or Signal. Messages can be enriched with links, emojis, photos and videos in high quality, input indicators show when the correspondent is writing, and group conversations are possible.
Recently Google announced a whole range of new features (animations for emojis, reactions, screen effects, Photomoji, creating a profile, etc.), of course with a touch of artificial intelligence to always stay up to date. Cutting edge trends (see our article). And the web giant clearly has no plans to stop! TheSpAndroid dug into the APK of a recent beta version of Google Messages and found several lines of code related to a message editing feature. It remains to be seen how this very practical function will be implemented in the application.
Google Messages: Message editing coming soon
While reviewing the beta app’s code, The SpAndroid discovered four “flags” related to the interface for editing messages, loading edit history, and processing incoming and outgoing edits. So far, enabling these flags doesn’t seem to have any effect, but it still shows that Google is working on the issue. Please note that these features have not yet been deployed, even in beta: they are still under development. It seems quite logical that the Mountain View company would dabble in message editing, with many instant messengers, starting with WhatsApp and iMessage, offering this option. Here are all the lines of code discovered by TheSpandroid:
- bugle.enable_edit_ui : Enables the message modification interface
- bugle.load _edit_history : Loads the message’s change history
- bugle.process_outgoing_edits: Displays changes made to a message
- bugle.process_incoming_edits: processes changes at the recipient
It now remains to be seen what this edition of the messages will look like. With iMessage, users have two minutes to edit a message, compared to fifteen with WhatsApp. Applications generally notify correspondents when a message has been changed. Note that TheSpandroid found code that suggests that message handling would work with the RCS protocol, the main argument of the Google application. This confirms the growing trend for instant messaging to inspire each other to enable increasingly flexible and adaptable communication. Since message handling is still under construction, don’t expect the feature to be available in the coming weeks. You have to be patient!
Originally posted 2023-12-11 18:00:19.