Google Messages is finally rolling out its long-awaited Conversation Categories feature

I can’t honestly tell you how long it’s been since Google first announced several new features for Google Messages. Things like the ability to star messages to pin them to the top of your inbox, message reactions, and even conversation categories all appeared for some users in India and a few other countries what seems like months ago, but never actually rolled out to most users – least of all those in the United States where I’m located.

However, that’s finally changing, as iMessage reactions recently became more broadly available (I still don’t have them!), and Conversation Categories are now appearing for some in the states and abroad on a larger scale.

Several users have tipped into Android Police to reveal that they do, in fact, have access to a new Categories bar at the top of their Messages inbox, as seen in the image below. These tipsters are located in the United States, but it would seem that the feature is set to roll out officially to many more users and locations across the globe over the next few weeks.

An “All” category will show all of your messages, while “Personal” and “Business” categories will separate any texts you get from friends and family from those one-time passwords and Uber Eats orders you keep getting.

In the settings of the app, there’s also an option to change the “Primary category view” so that you can permanently filter out business messages and only see those from your loved ones if you want – it’s up to you.

Additionally, an option to automatically delete those pesky, but useful one-time passwords (OTPs) will be toggleable as seen above, which was yet another feature Google promised and seems to have taken its time fulfilling.

If you’ve received any of this for yourself, we’d be excited to hear about it in the comments. Google Messages is quickly becoming an awesome and more useful app with time, even becoming the default RCS application on the new Samsung Galaxy S22.