Did you know you can schedule a text message to send later? Well,
spoiler alert - you can! But you can also do a whole lot more in Google Messages.
These are the best hidden Google Messages features.
Hey friends! I’m Tasia Custode and welcome back to my YouTube Channel where I share tech tips,
app reviews, and a metric ton of Google Tips. Today,
I’m sharing 10 hidden Google Messages features. You ready? Then let’s go.
So let’s kick things off with hidden feature number 1. Use Google’s smart reply feature to
reply to messages without actually typing anything.
So from your Google Messages app, tap the menu icon and head to your settings. From here, tap
on Suggestions and simply enable the suggestions you want to use. Mine are auto-enabled, but you
can choose between assistant suggestions, then here is the smart reply I’m referring to. This
is really similar to Gmail and Google’s predictive response feature. But also from here, you have the
option to toggle on or off suggested actions and stickers. So, with smart reply toggled on,
now when you go to reply to that text, you’ll have suggestions that you can send without even typing.
Alright, number two on the list: block and report spam.
Our phones do a pretty good job of telling us if a call is spam, but I find some messages
get through. But with Google Messages, you’ve got added spam protection.
From your Messages app, tap the more button on the top to head back to your settings and this time
select spam protection. If this is not toggled on, you’ll definitely want to enable it here.
You can also block and report individual messages, should one get through.
From the chat, tap the more icon and choose details. Then, just select block and report spam.
Okay, number three on the list is to pin conversations. Yes,
the same feature that’s available in iMessage is available in Google Messages.
So for those that are favorites of yours, simply tap and hold the conversation to select it,
then tap the pin icon in the top toolbar. This will move that conversation up
to the top of the screen, effectively pinning it to the top for easy access.
The fourth hidden Google Messages feature is to
easily make the font bigger. This is great if you have a hard time reading the tiny text.
From a chat, simply pinch out on the screen to increase the text size. You can of course pinch
back in to make it small again. This is just like you’re used to doing to zoom into a picture,
but with you messages. And this just affects your chat, not every other app on your phone.
Ok, number 5 on the list is to quickly share your location with others.
This is similar to how you can do so on Google Maps.
So, this hidden feature is found within the specific chat itself. Simply tap on
the plus icon near the keyboard and then just tap on the location icon. From here,
you can either search for a location to send, or you can send your current location.
The next hidden Google Messages feature is to mark messages to easily find them later. Yes,
Google Messages stores starred messages in their own category.
So, if you need to remember the details of a message someone sent you,
like a website or picture or location, whatever, you can just tap and hold that
message and then tap the star icon from the top toolbar. Now to easily find starred messages,
just tap the more button and select starred. If you starred a lot of messages,
you can even search in here too using the search bar at the top to easily find your messages.
And now we’ve come to the part in the video where if you’re still watching,
thank you so much. Would you please consider giving this video a like and subscribing to my
Channel for more content like this? I’d so appreciate it! Now on with the show!
Moving on to number 7 on my list of hidden Google Messages features, and that’s to use
Google Messages on the Web. Yes, just like you can with What’s App, you can with Google Messages.
To do so, you’ll first want to head to the google messages website, and I have the link for that
in the description below. Then, from your phone, open up the Messages app
and tap on more options at the top, and select device
pairing. Tap QR code scanner and use your phone to scan the code. It’s really that easy.
Coming in at number 8, did you know you can archive messages?
So, instead of deleting them and having them gone forever, you can just store them away.
So from your list of chats, tap and hold on a chat that you’d like to
archive. Once you hold down on a chat, you can select the archive button from the top toolbar.
This will move the chat to your archive section. So, to access archived messages,
you just head to the three-dot more menu then select archived. By the way, if you want to move
a chat out of the archives and back to your main list, you can do that too. Once again,
you’ll tap and hold on the convo you want to unarchive and this time tap the unarchive option.
And before I get to one of my most favorite hidden google messages feature, let’s dive into number 9:
dark mode. You’ve got a few options when it comes to enabling dark mode.
From your Message app, head back to the more icon and tap on
‘choose theme’. Here, you may already be set to system default,
which will automatically switch between light and dark mode as the OS settings change. This
is my preferred theme, but if you want you can toggle on dark to be on dark mode all the time.
And we have come to the end of the road! Coming in at number 10,
one of my absolute favorite google messages features is to schedule messages to send later.
Ya, you know how you can do that in Gmail? Well, you can do it in Messages too. I know!
So, all you have to do is type the message out that you want to send
but instead of just hitting send, tap and hold the send option. A popup menu will
appear and from here you can choose the date and time you’d like your message to be sent.
Once you pick your preferred time, simply tap on the send message icon to schedule the message. If
you decide you don’t want to send the message afterall, you can simply tap the clock icon
to the left of the scheduled message and either edit it, send it now, or delete it.
Can you believe?!? That is a what? A game changer! But guess what? There are actually even
more hidden Google Messages features, but they were cut for time. So, if you want even more,
let me know in the comments below and I’ll make another video for ya.
So those are my favorite hidden Google Messages features. What do you think of
these top 10 picks? Have any favorites? Let everyone know in the comments below.
As always, thank you so much for watching. If you liked this video, then I want to know! Give
it a like, a share, or leave that comment below. You can click right about here to subscribe to my
Channel and here and here for even more Google tips. Thanks for watching, see ya next time.