You can now react to Google Messages with any emoji that your heart desires

Google Messages is vastly different from what it used to be back when it was first released. You can now star messages, set reminders to snooze texts, filter or categorize your messages between either personal or business, and more. Most notable, however, is the ability to react to messages sent to you from iPhone users with a limited set of emoji to better express yourself.

This was previously only an iMessage feature, and while many modern messaging applications have long since implemented it, SMS has held everyone back in this regard as it’s remained utilitarian at its core. Now that Apple has full-on refused to implement RCS chat into iMessage even though Google publicly grilled them for it, most people you ask will stand on either one side or the other of this ridiculous fence. I personally love Google Messages, but I do think it could be even more capable – something Google is really striving for lately.

One thing is certain though and that’s the fact that the company does seem to have some self-serving interest in pushing RCS on the industry. Sure, it’s better for everyone all around, depending on who you’re talking to, but it’s clear that universal adoption of Rich Communication Services (RCS) is the only hope Google has of building a sustainable and widely used iMessage competitor.

With all of that out of the way, we’re beginning to see reports of Google Messages users gaining the ability to react to messages using any emoji they want – not just the limited set of basic emoticons they were previously restricted to!

Per 9to5Google, pressing and holding any message in a conversation will call up the entire emoji library, letting you freely browse and choose the one that best suits how you feel about a given chat. Because of the aforementioned RCS feud going on between Apple and Google, these reactions will still appear on iPhones as a quoted message (see below).

Before reactions were added to Google Messages in this way, Android users were the ones who were stuck with odd quoted emoji texts when iOS users reacted to their chats.

Google has flipped the script on Apple, and not iPhone users see things like “😂 to ‘[Message]'”.

The new feature for picking any emoji your heart desires while chatting with your friends and family is rolling out this very moment to all users – no sideloading necessary. If you’re not seeing it yet, just be patient as it’s likely a server-side update.