Google is likely to add optional chat head bubbles to its Messages app for Android. It looks similar to the chat heads popularised by Facebook Messenger on Android and moves individual chat threads to floating icons that layer on top of apps to be always accessible.
First spotted by tech expert Jane Machun Wong on Twitter in October, a recent XDA Developers report managed to get the feature working too.
Google Messages to implement bubble notifications for Android 10 pic.twitter.com/St8ejZrKAU
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 24, 2019
The overlay tech used by Messenger is like Marmite for Android fans – people tend to either love or hate it. Google implementing it for Messages at this stage seems a bit of a futile gesture to us given Google’s graveyard of messaging platforms.
Allo, Hangouts and Google+ are all defunct now, and were once possible genuine Android alternatives to Apple’s iMessage. Despite the recent introduction of RCS in some countries that lets Messages display media better and shows typing indicators, it’s not as unified a messaging service as Android fans have been hoping for.
Chat bubbles are a nice to have option and it looks like they’re coming, but it will hardly save Google’s mobile messaging mess.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.