Google Messages has received a small but very important update, that can boost the popularity of this Android-based messaging app. Google Messages received its big update in July where the entire home screen was redesigned. It replaced the navigation drawer and introduced key branding into the Android app. Alongside, the search filters were also tweaked slightly. But now, it has received yet another powerful upgrade in the form of a new forwarding user interface. This new UI supports sending messages to multiple contacts at the same time. This will finally save users the trouble of copy-pasting the same message to different recipients one by one.
According to a report by 9to5Google, the Forwarding feature will allow users to send a single message to multiple contacts at the same time without the need to send it repeatedly to these contacts. To use this feature on either an SMS text, RCS chat, image, or other messages, you can simply long press for a couple of seconds, and a pop-up menu will appear. In the top-right corner, there should be an option that says ‘Forward’. Click it and you can choose the contacts you want to share the message with.
The Forward option opens an overlay window where users can see different contact names along with their contact images, numbers, and an option to select the contacts. At the bottom, there is an option to start a new message as well. The new UI also displays the conversation list along with the last message to give the user more context into what is being forwarded.
Once you have selected the users, in the next window you can see the contact icons of the people you’re sending the messages to, along with a compose field to let you write more messages to the same contacts. Google also helps you distinguish between a group message by displaying a “Share individually” label on top.
The update has not yet been rolled out widely but is expected to be made available soon.
