Google Messages update brings long-awaited RCS chat improvements

Google announced a couple of new features for its messaging app last week, including an RCS group chat icon customization option, RCS tags for contacts, and notification snoozing. Although the company did not share a release timeline for these features at the time, they’re now reaching users with Google Messages version 20250528_00_RC00 (via 9to5Google).

Google Messages users are finally getting the ability to customize RCS group chat icons, several months after we first spotted the feature in a teardown. As we showcased earlier, this feature lets you upload a custom icon for RCS group chats or pick one from Google’s Illustrations tool by tapping the new camera button next to the group chat icon.

The latest Google Messages release also brings support for notification snoozing, allowing users to mute notifications from chats for 1 hour, 8 hours, 24 hours, or always. To do so, you can long-press on a chat and select the new Snooze icon. Chats that you snooze will be grayed out and display a snooze icon underneath the time and date.

Google has also rolled out RCS tags for the New chat page, making it easier for users to tell whether a contact has RCS enabled. Additionally, the company has introduced a new “Delete for everyone” option in RCS chats. These features bring Google Messages up to par with other popular messaging apps and should incentivize more users to finally make the switch to RCS.