Screen Effects that briefly take over the Google Messages app are slowly rolling out with only a subset of triggers available.
This expressive feature shows a fullscreen animation for a few seconds when you send or receive certain phrases:
- “I love you” and “Happy Valentine’s Day”: An outpouring of hearts and a dove(?) flying across your screen for good measure
- “Sounds good”: Various thumb ups from the left and right edges of the screen
Google also mentioned “it’s snowing” last year, but we’re not seeing that available yet. In all, Google teased “15+ hidden Screen Effects prompt words.” They work in both RCS and SMS conversations, while there’s currently no way to turn them off. (An app-level expressive setting would be nice.)
This feature has been slowly rolling out in recent weeks to the beta channel, with availability picking up ahead of Valentine’s Day.
To recap, Photomoji and Animated Emoji (single ones sent in chat) are widely available, while Reaction Effects that provide an additional animation when you react with an emoji — 👍❤️ 😂😮😡👎💩🎉😠😢 — should also be getting there.
Voice Moods and the redesigned audio recorder, Custom Bubbles, and Profiles are only available for a few users.
More on Google Messages:
- Google Messages might be switching to double tap to react
- Verizon switching to Google’s Jibe for RCS on Android
- You say ‘Allo’ and I say ‘Gemini is coming to Google Messages’
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