Google Messages may get an old-school navigation drawer

Messaging on your Android phone might look different once again as Google may be planning to resurrect an old-school feature in one of its most important apps — Google Messages.

After doing away with the navigation drawer in most of its apps over the years, Google might add it to a future version of its default messaging app. A new profile switcher is also possibly headed to the app.

Folks over at 9to5Google discovered the good ol’ navigation hamburger menu while tinkering with the latest version of Google Messages. Screenshots show that it appears on the left side of the search field and includes items like “Starred,” “Archived,” “Spam & blocked,” “Device pairing,” “Choose theme,” and “Mark all as read.”

Most of this stuff currently resides in the three-dot menu on the right. Moving it over to a navigation drawer might please users who preferred these things way back when Google had them in almost all apps. Then again, some people might prefer to keep things the way they are.

Meanwhile, another new feature that might be headed to Google Messages is an account switcher on the top right corner. It looks like the one you get in Gmail or Google Play to switch your Google account. What is it doing in the Google Messages app, you ask? We don’t know either. Currently, the app doesn’t need to pull any information from your Google account since it only deals with text messages.

Perhaps Google is planning some sort of Google Photos integration, as suggested by 9to5Google. Screenshots show that Google intends to help users share higher-quality videos through the app. If that’s the case, having an account button to access the Google Photos library makes sense. But we can’t be certain if that’ll be the only use of the account switcher when or if it lands in Google Messages.