Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Messages is working on a long-requested feature that addresses one of the app’s most glaring limitations.
- The feature would let users handle multiple messages and images in a way that’s currently not possible.
- Google is also testing a refreshed interface to support the new functionality, though it’s not yet available publicly.
Google Messages is constantly evolving, but despite being one of the best RCS messaging apps available, it still lacks some basic features that rival platforms like WhatsApp have offered for years. Now, it looks like Google is finally addressing one of those long-standing omissions with a feature so basic that it’s surprising it wasn’t included from the start.
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As it stands today, Google Messages does not allow users to forward multiple messages or images. Users have been asking for this feature for years, and it looks like Google is finally paying attention to the little things.
Right now, if you select multiple images to forward, you only get options to delete or download them. You have to select images one at a time if you want to forward them. The same goes for texts. You have to forward them one at a time because the app doesn’t even let you select multiple texts at a time to forward them together.
Thankfully, Google could finally get rid of this limitation with new forwarding options for multiple texts and images.
While digging through the latest beta version of Google Messages (messages.android_20260618_05_RC02.phone.openbeta_dynamic), we enabled multiple image and text forwarding within the app.
With the feature enabled, we were able to select multiple messages, including images, and access a new overflow menu represented by a three-dot icon in the top-right corner of the conversation header. Tapping this menu reveals a new Forward option, and selecting it opens the contact picker, allowing users to choose recipients while displaying a preview of the selected messages at the bottom of the screen before sending.
This preview is also new since the current forwarding screen doesn’t have it, even when forwarding single messages. Google has probably tweaked the interface to better support forwarding multiple messages at once.
Of course, this new message-forwarding feature is still very much a work in progress, and you’ll have to wait a while before it rolls out widely in the stable version of the Google Messages app. Still, it’s reassuring to see Google finally bringing this basic functionality to Messages.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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