With RCS being exclusive to Google Messages and no decent alternative, it’s the only practical option for Android users. And while it’s not bad, it’s not too impressive either.
That’s changing a bit, though. Google Messages finally has chat themes now, which is not exactly revolutionary, but it can make texting a little less boring.
Google Messages finally borrowed my favorite Samsung Messages feature
Finally, Google is catching up
Samsung Messages is officially gone now (RIP to it). But for years it had one trick that kept me from even considering a switch, which is chat backgrounds. That gave you an easy way to make every chat a little different. You could use a photo from your gallery to give your chats some personality.
It’s not exactly a rare feature either. Almost every messaging app, including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and Apple Messages has offered chat backgrounds for years. Google Messages was the odd one out, but not anymore.
It has rolled out proper chat themes, so you’re no longer limited to just changing bubble colors. It now lets you set different wallpapers for every chat, and this is something I’ve always missed ever since switching from Samsung Messages.
Personalize your chats with themes
No more boring chat screens
Chat themes in Google Messages are officially out now, so you should see the option on your phone already. Open any conversation, tap the three-dot icon in the top-right corner, and choose Chat theme. You’ll see a handful of wallpapers from Google, but if you don’t like any of them, you can pick a photo from your Gallery too.
Make sure you choose a portrait-oriented photo. You can go with a landscape shot, but you’ll have to crop a bit too much. Once you’ve picked the background, you can also set a color scheme to go with it. The same menu also lets you reset the theme with a tap.
Unlike Samsung Messages, though, you can’t apply a theme to all chats at once. That means you’ll have to repeat the whole process, thread by thread, which can be slightly tedious if you want to decorate the entire inbox.
If you don’t see the chat theme option on your phone, make sure you’re running the latest version of the app. If it’s still missing, simply wait for some time, and it should appear automatically. Also, chat themes require RCS to be turned on. This shouldn’t be a problem for most people, but if you’ve disabled it previously for whatever reason, you’ll need to re-enable it. Tap your profile icon in Google Messages, go to Messages settings > RCS chats and enable the toggle at the top.
Two things I didn’t expect from chat themes
Good or bad, hard to say
Google Messages chat themes are fun, but two things about it stood out to me. The first is that the chat themes you apply are only visible to you and not the other person. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on how you see it. On the plus side, it gives both people a chance to use different themes. But on the other hand, it also means the other person won’t see the chat theme you’ve carefully picked.
The other surprise is the lack of Gemini integration for generating backdrops. On iMessage, for instance, you can use Image Playground to create unique backgrounds with AI. And considering Gemini is already a part of Google Messages, it’s a bit of a strange thing that you can’t use it to create one-of-a-kind chat themes.
Again, this one cuts both ways too. I’m not exactly a fan of Gemini showing up inside Messages in the first place, so I don’t really miss it there. But yes, for anyone coming from an iPhone, this is going to feel like a missing piece.
There’s still a lot of room for improvement
Chat themes are nice, but Google Messages still has a lot of ground to cover. Folders are probably the feature I miss the most. On Samsung Messages, you could organize your chats into different categories, and that made it all too easy to separate personal chats from work and everything else. Google Messages just dumps everything into one long feed, and if you text as much as I do, you know how messy that gets.
Text formatting is another basic that’s still missing. Bold, italics, even something as simple as strikethrough — you can’t do any of it. iMessage and most other messaging apps have had these for years, so it’s not some odd demand.
Google Messages also doesn’t let you lock chats. This is slightly niche considering you can lock the app on most Android phones, but it’s not the same thing. We’d all still love the option to lock individual chats as needed.
Chat themes prove that Google is finally catching up on personalization. But it still needs plenty more to catch up with the competition.