The Google Messages application should soon welcome a very practical function allowing you to modify a message after it has been sent, like in other messaging services. Enough to avoid typos and other misunderstandings!
With more than a billion monthly active users, Google Messages has established itself as one of the flagship SMS, MMS and RCS applications. And, for this, the Web giant had the good idea to constantly seek to bring it closer to popular instant messaging services, like WhatsApp or Signal. Thus, messages can be enriched with links, emojis, photos and videos in high quality, input indicators show when the correspondent is writing, group conversations are possible.
Recently, Google announced a whole host of new functions (animations for emojis, reactions, screen effects, photomoji, creation of a profile, etc.) with, of course, a touch of artificial intelligence, in order to stay up to date. cutting edge trends (see our article). And the Web giant clearly doesn’t intend to stop there! TheSpAndroid dug into the APK of a recent beta version of Google Messages and found several lines of code regarding a message editing feature. It remains to be seen how this function, which is very practical, would be implemented in the application.
Google Messages: message editing coming soon
Digging into the beta app’s code, The SpAndroid unearthed four “flags” relating to the user interface for editing messages, loading the edit history, and processing incoming and outgoing edits. So far, enabling these flags doesn’t seem to have any effect, but it still reveals that Google is working on the issue. Please note, these functions have not yet been deployed, even in beta: they are still under development. It seems rather logical that the Mountain View firm works on 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 : activates the message modification interface
- bugle.load _edit_history : loads message modification 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 form this edition of the messages will take. On iMessage, users have two minutes to edit a message, compared to fifteen for WhatsApp. Applications generally notify correspondents when a message has been modified. Note that TheSpandroid found code suggesting that message editing would work with the RCS protocol, the main argument of Google’s application. This confirms the growing trend for instant messaging to take inspiration from each other in order to offer ever more flexible and adaptable communication. Since message editing is still under construction, you should not expect to see the function arrive in the coming weeks. You will have to be patient!