Conversation categories and OTP auto delete in Google Messages are starting to roll out more widely

Now landing for some in the US

Google Messages is the primary app for messaging on many Android phones, including the Pixel 6 and the brand-new Galaxy S22 series. While it’s a great way to reach your family and friends, it’s also the app that catches OTP codes and notifications via SMS from your banks — and that can clutter up your messages list very quickly. To give users more control over their inboxes, Google introduced conversation categories, putting its AI to good use by automatically sorting them into individual channels. After a limited rollout in India, this feature now seems to be making its way to more countries around the world, and one-time password (OTP) auto deletion is also finally making the rounds.

OTP auto-deletion is a feature that Google has been testing for an incredibly long time, with reports of it popping up in the beta initially showing up back in 2021. The feature automatically scans the Messages app for OTP codes that you need to log in or confirm banking actions and such and automatically deletes them after 24 hours — a more than generous time frame given that these codes are usually only valid for a few minutes, but better safe than sorry. Once the feature goes live for you, you’ll get a small message at the top of the app asking you if you want to enable it, so it’s opt-in rather than opt-out.

We also received a tip that conversation categories are currently rolling out to some people in the US, and while I can’t see it on my device yet, it should roll out to more users and regions within the next few weeks.

There’s a carousel with three categories: All, which shows your whole conversation list in its full unkempt glory, along with Personal and Business, which both sort your messages based on whether the app thinks it’s personal stuff or business-related. There aren’t nearly the same amount of categories we’ve previously spotted, including no OTP, Transactions, or Offers categories, though there’s a chance Google’s trying to optimize this feature regionally.

There are also a couple of helpful features coming to Settings as a result of this addition. If you don’t like “All” being the default category, there’s a feature to change it in Settings to one of the other two. For some people, there’s also a new toggle for auto-deleting OTP texts.

This update remains a gradual server-side rollout from what we’ve gathered, so if you want to check these changes out, try your luck and download the latest version of the app on the Google Play Store or APKMirror.

Thanks: Hamzah

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