For years, group chats in Google Messages have been a source of quiet exasperation for Android users. While Apple’s iMessage allowed iPhone owners to name their group conversations, add or remove members, and enjoy a polished group messaging experience, Android users were often stuck with clunky, unnamed threads that lacked basic management features. Now, Google appears to be rolling out a significant update to its Messages app that addresses one of the platform’s longest-standing shortcomings — but the path to parity with Apple’s offering remains longer than many might expect.
According to a report from Android Authority, Google Messages is gaining new group chat capabilities that give users more control over their conversations. The update allows group chat creators and participants to manage membership, adjust group settings, and interact with group conversations in ways that were previously unavailable or inconsistent. The changes are being spotted in recent versions of the Google Messages app, signaling that a broader rollout may be underway or imminent.
What’s Actually Changing in Google Messages Group Chats
The core of the update centers on improved group management tools for RCS-based conversations. RCS, or Rich Communication Services, is the messaging protocol that Google has championed as the modern successor to SMS and MMS. When all participants in a group chat are using RCS, the conversation gains features like read receipts, typing indicators, higher-quality media sharing, and — now — better group administration. Users are reportedly seeing options to add new members to existing group chats, remove participants, and edit group names and images with greater reliability than before.
These may sound like table-stakes features for anyone who has used WhatsApp, Telegram, or iMessage, but for Google Messages users, they represent a meaningful step forward. Group chats conducted over the older SMS/MMS protocols have always been limited — messages could fail to deliver, media would be compressed to near-unrecognizable quality, and there was no mechanism for managing who was in the conversation. RCS was supposed to fix all of this, but the group chat experience has lagged behind one-on-one RCS conversations in terms of feature completeness.
The RCS Prerequisite: Why Not Everyone Will Benefit Equally
There is an important caveat to these improvements: they only work when every member of a group chat is connected via RCS. If even one participant is on a device or carrier that doesn’t support RCS, the entire conversation can fall back to MMS, stripping away the enhanced features. This has been a persistent friction point for Android users, particularly in markets like the United States where carrier support for RCS has been uneven, though it has improved substantially over the past two years.
Google has been pushing hard to make RCS the default messaging standard on Android. In 2023 and into 2024, the company publicly pressured Apple to adopt the protocol, launching a high-profile campaign under the banner of “Get The Message.” Apple eventually announced that it would add RCS support to the iPhone starting with iOS 18, which launched in the fall of 2024. That move was widely seen as a significant win for Google’s interoperability argument, though Apple’s implementation has been characterized as basic — supporting core RCS features but not the end-to-end encryption that Google has built into its own RCS implementation through Messages.
Apple’s RCS Adoption Complicates the Picture
Apple’s entry into the RCS space has created a new dynamic for group chats that include both Android and iPhone users. With iOS 18 and later, cross-platform group chats can now use RCS instead of falling back to MMS, which means higher-quality photos and videos, delivery and read receipts, and the ability to send messages over Wi-Fi. However, the experience is still not equivalent to what users get in all-iMessage or all-Google Messages RCS groups. Features like end-to-end encryption, message editing, and some of the more advanced group management tools may not carry over in mixed-platform conversations.
This interoperability gap is something that both companies will need to address over time. The GSM Association, which oversees the RCS standard, has been working on a universal profile that includes end-to-end encryption, but adoption of updated specifications takes time and coordination across device manufacturers and carriers. For now, users in mixed Android-iPhone group chats will have a better experience than the old SMS/MMS days, but it won’t match what’s possible within a single platform’s walled garden.
Google’s Broader Messaging Strategy and the Gemini Factor
The group chat improvements come at a time when Google is investing heavily in its Messages app as a central communication hub. The company has been integrating its Gemini AI assistant into Google Messages, allowing users to interact with the AI chatbot directly within their messaging threads. This positions Google Messages not just as a texting app but as a platform where users can get AI-powered assistance — drafting messages, answering questions, generating content — without leaving the conversation.
Google has also been adding features like photo organization within chats, improved search functionality, and better spam and fraud detection powered by on-device machine learning. These incremental improvements collectively make Google Messages a more competitive offering, though the app still lacks some of the social and expressive features that have made platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram popular globally. Stickers, custom chat themes, and community features remain areas where third-party messaging apps hold an advantage.
The Competitive Context: Why Group Chat Matters So Much
Group messaging has become one of the most important use cases for modern communication apps. Family group chats, work coordination threads, social planning conversations — these are the contexts in which people spend a significant portion of their messaging time. A poor group chat experience doesn’t just frustrate individual users; it can push entire social groups toward alternative platforms. This is precisely why Google has been so focused on improving this aspect of its Messages app.
The competitive pressure is real. WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, dominates global messaging with over two billion users and has long offered sophisticated group chat features including admin controls, disappearing messages, polls, and community groups that can contain thousands of members. Telegram offers similar functionality with even larger group sizes and channel features. In the United States, where SMS and carrier-based messaging have historically been more dominant than in other markets, the shift toward feature-rich messaging platforms has been slower — but it is happening, and Google knows it cannot afford to let its default Android messaging app fall further behind.
What Users Should Expect Going Forward
For the average Android user, the group chat improvements in Google Messages should translate to a more reliable and feature-rich experience when communicating with other Android users. The ability to properly manage group membership, name conversations, and share high-quality media in group settings brings Google Messages closer to what users have come to expect from modern messaging apps. The rollout appears to be happening gradually, as is typical with Google’s server-side feature deployments, so not all users will see the changes at the same time.
Looking ahead, the key question is whether Google can close the remaining gaps — particularly around cross-platform group chats with iPhone users and the addition of more expressive and social features. The company’s track record with messaging is, to put it charitably, inconsistent. Google has launched and shuttered numerous messaging products over the years, from Google Talk to Hangouts to Allo. The decision to consolidate around Google Messages and the RCS standard has brought more focus and coherence to the company’s messaging strategy, but execution on the details will determine whether Android users finally get a group chat experience that rivals what’s available elsewhere.
The improvements reported by Android Authority suggest that Google is paying attention to the right problems. Whether the company can maintain this momentum and deliver a truly competitive group messaging product will depend on continued investment, faster feature rollouts, and deeper collaboration with Apple and the broader industry on RCS interoperability standards. For now, Android users have reason to be cautiously optimistic — their group chats are getting better, even if they aren’t yet where they need to be.