Facebook users have anticipated a Messenger "unsend" feature for months, but the company still hasn't provided one. The feature was promised very shortly after a report revealed that Facebook had removed some of Mark Zuckerberg's messages from other users' inboxes, an ability that's not available to ordinary users. Though that's about to change, the unsend option isn't quite what users had expected.
Facebook Messenger is getting a complete overhaul, and if you've been increasingly frustrated by how much cruft there is in the way of your chats, this new app might make you very happy. Messenger 4, the social network says, puts simplicity at the forefront, with the promise of easier navigation, cleaner designs, and more.
If you've been waiting for Android Messages to come to Chrome OS, then good news: your wait may soon be over. Through Android Messages integration with Chrome OS has been a planned feature for quite some time now, we haven't seen much movement on that particular front. Instead, Google has put much of its recent focus on getting Android Messages' web integration up and running.
In the past couple of years, we've seen a number of instances where mobile platforms, both iOS and Android, are hit with bugs where receiving a text message containing unique code or a specific character causes the app or even the whole device to crash. Now it's the PlayStation 4's turn. A growing number of owner are reporting this same problem, where a message is received and it forces the console to crash, in some cases even requiring a factory reset to fix.
Back in February, Google's Area 120 team launched a handy app called Reply. Essentially, it took the Smart Reply feature that Google has implemented in a few of its apps and expanded it, both in functionality and compatibility. It was definitely an interesting "experiment," as Google described it, but now the time has come for it to be put to rest.
For the past couple of years, Google has been making a push for widespread adoption of Rich Communication Services, or RCS. Today, Google got one step closer to its goal, announcing an expanded partnership with Samsung that focuses on growing RCS adoption. The end goal, naturally, is to make RCS more prevalent on Android, and teaming up with the biggest Android manufacturer seems like a good way to do that.
Android users who are fans of "dark mode" UIs, we have some bad news for you: only a day or so after being updated, Google's Android Messages app has been rolled back, removing the option for dark mode and returning all other design changes to the previous look. This goes for all users, who will now notice the app's stark, all-white look, regardless if they installed the latest update.
A highly requested feature, dark mode, is now available in Android Messages. As with the new YouTube dark mode, Android Messages users can eliminate the bright white background, instead switching to a darker interface that is easier on the eyes over longer periods of time. The new mode is available in Android Messages version 3.5, which brings the same Material Design that recently arrived on Google Phone and Google Contacts.
If it can't make you share more photos, Instagram instead plans to coax you into chatting, with a new feature underscoring the app's direct messaging. Although direct messaged have long been offered on Instagram, they're now getting status indicators which show whether someone is currently active.
Reddit is bringing back an old-school form of Internet interaction with strangers: chat rooms. The company has been quietly working on its Chat platform, including offering it as a limited beta over the past year. Over these months, Reddit says that about 7,000 people have used the chat feature, paving the way for today's big news: the chat room beta is expanding to more subreddits.
RCS is the next-generation text messaging standard that's designed to make traditional texting a bit more like dedicated messaging platforms, with features like multi-person chats and read receipts. Adoption of the Google-backed standard has been slow in the US, but it's making a big step forward with T-Mobile now rolling out RCS Universal Profiles to select Android users.
Multi-platform messaging app WhatsApp has announced a new option that essentially allows group chat admins to create one-way broadcast channels, a feature seen on other social services like Telegram and Discord. On the surface it's a way for the Facebook-owned WhatsApp to give group admins more control, but it's also a big step towards letting users turn the app into a way of receiving announcements or breaking news.