For a core messaging app, Google Messages still does not have its basics right. There are several oddities and annoyances in the app that frustrate heavy users. One of them is being unable to select only parts of a message to copy. Another is the cumbersome process of forwarding or starting a message in a conversation. Google appears to be tackling both of these problems with the latest Messages beta update.
Currently, if you long-press a text in a Google Messages conversation, it brings up a pill containing emoji for quick reactions. Other useful actions, such as copying, deleting, or starring a message, appear in the toolbar at the top, while options like Share and Forward are buried in the three-dot overflow menu.
This makes commonly used actions like sharing or forwarding a message unnecessarily cumbersome. WhatsApp and Telegram do a far better job of surfacing these frequently used action buttons.
Google Messages is now rolling out a revamped long-press menu that lists all these actions in one place (via Reddit).
Left: Current long-press menu in Google Messages; Right: The new long-press menu
It does away with the top toolbar and three-dot overflow menu. Instead, all the options — Reply, Forward, Copy, Star, Delete, Select more, Info, and Save — now appear in the long-press menu. There’s also a background blur effect, which gives the menu a more polished look.
Google was first spotted testing this new long-press menu in Google Messages almost a year ago.
Google Messages is cleaning up its everyday annoyances
Additionally, long-pressing the chat again lets users select only parts of a message to copy. Google has been testing this basic copy-paste upgrade in Google Messages for a few months now. As things stand, you can only copy the entire text of a message in Google Messages. Given how basic this functionality is, Google should have rolled it out widely by now.
For now, the new long-press menu and selective copy-paste upgrades in Google Messages only seem to be available to select users on the beta channel. Hopefully, the company gets around to pushing these changes to the stable version soon.
While neither feature is groundbreaking, together they should improve the texting experience in Google Messages and make frequently used actions more accessible, reducing unnecessary taps.