Summary
- Google Messages is testing a new feature allowing users to reply to images and videos in a thread-style view.
- The updated interface includes emoji reactions and a chat bubble icon to view existing replies.
- This particular addition was spotted within a beta version of Google Messages and isn’t widely available yet.
As the default messaging app on most Android smartphones, Google Messages is used by millions across the world. Although the app has received a ton of new features over the past year or so — including a handful of Gemini-related features — some functionality we find on other apps is missing. It now looks like the Messages team is working behind the scenes to bring one such feature to the app.
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It’s a subtle change
Looking through the most recent Google Messages beta (20250115_03_RC00 beta), the folks at Android Authority have stumbled upon an updated interface for the media viewer. In its current form, tapping a video or photo in the conversation doesn’t offer many options, barring the save/download and share icons. However, with the new beta version of Google Messages, the media viewer gets some new options at the bottom left of the screen.
There’s a circular chat bubble icon followed by a row of the six standard emoji and a button to pick from a larger selection. Tapping the chat bubble opens a thread-style view detailing all the replies to the image. Each reply to the image appears individually in the standard view, thus providing enough context about the discussion, which can be crucial in a group chat.
We may have some waiting to do
In a video uploaded to YouTube by Android Authority, we can see how users will be able to comment on an image, with the demo video also offering a good view of the emoji picker. Replies appear one after the other in the thread view with the most recent appearing at the bottom.
This same interface also appears while chatting with Gemini, based on another video uploaded to YouTube, though the media viewer in this scenario doesn’t offer emoji reactions as an option. Currently, long-pressing an image or video in a chat pulls up the floating emoji reactions bar. We expect this functionality to remain unchanged, even if Google decides to go public with the threaded replies view for media content.
Since the new interface was manually activated in a Google Messages beta release, it’s hard to say when or if Google will roll out these changes more widely. But given how much work has gone into this revamped media viewer, we’d be surprised if it didn’t make it to the stable version of the app. Would you find a feature like this useful in Google Messages?