Google Messages raises its limit for end-to-end encrypted group chats to 100 members

To date, you’ve been able to add up to 20 other people besides yourself (21 total) into a Google Messages group chat with end-to-end encryption. This feature has been a thing for over a year now, and while that’s quite a high limit for most people, there are undoubtedly folks who would prefer that ceiling be raised to allow a lot of additional participants.

You can technically add more people than that specific limit, but then the end-to-end encryption would automatically be toggled off. Luckily, Google is beginning to roll out the capability to include up to 100 members in group chats without breaking E2EE! This update, which only currently applies to those in the Messages beta, was first noticed by Mishaal Rahman on Twitter.

Google Messages is starting to roll out support for having up to 100 members in an end-to-end encrypted group chat!

H/T @SeeAreEff pic.twitter.com/To9IaLXofY

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) January 18, 2023

While an absurdly high number to raise the limit to, 100 members per chat makes sense as it’s the current limit for RCS as a standard. This means that Google Messages is simply playing catch up with its new golden child so it can further poke and prod Apple to cave into what it believes is the future.

For those unfamiliar, E2EE – or “end-to-end encryption” – is a method of secure communication that prevents anyone from grabbing your data during the transfer process. Essentially, you and the recipient of a message both have cryptographic keys on your devices that are used to encrypt and decrypt the message, and no one – not Google or any other third party has access to either key, so there should be no snooping or interception as the data is passed over the server.

I’ve personally never had a need for group chats over SMS to be larger than a handful of recipients, and have instead opted for Google Chat, Discord, and other tools for company discussions, but I can see how Google wants to make Messages an option for those who want to do things directly through RCS. Let me know in the comments if you think you’ll use 100-person chats in Google Messages.