- Google again allows users to set names and profile pictures for their contacts in Google Messages
- The app switched to a social media-style profile system in 2024
- Share profile apparently still available
Google has announced that users of its Messages app will be able to set names and photos for their contacts again after the app switched to a social media profile-style system in 2024.
As 9to5Google notes, profile sharing (originally called profile discovery) was rolled out to Messages users starting in March 2024, replacing the names and images of contacts attached to a user’s contacts with information from the accounts. from Google of your contacts.
After this, Google rolled out the “customize how you’re seen” page in Messages, a process that can’t be skipped and that leaned even further into a social platform style of self-presentation.
Although the decision to make profile sharing the only way to set contact names and photos was reversed, users can apparently still choose to use their contacts’ preferred information; There is no indication that profile sharing has been abandoned completely.
Customizing a contact’s information is, unsurprisingly, quite simple: simply tap a contact’s name or photo within the chat, opening a page containing the user’s details, which can then be updated manually.
The addition of the profile sharing feature was originally announced in November 2023 and can be seen as part of Google’s efforts to introduce a functionally similar rival to Apple’s iMessage.
As we previously reported, the gap between the two platforms is starting to narrow with Apple’s adoption of RCS (Rich Communication Services), a standard that allows easy sharing of media and group chats similar to its own iMessage standard.
Google has long championed RCS as a collaborative and forward-thinking standard, and even publicly celebrated its rival’s decision to implement RCS on the iPhone.
Additionally, a host of new messaging tools are coming to Google’s default messaging app in late 2024 designed to protect users from scammers and spammers, such as warnings about dangerous links, blurry filters for unpleasant images, and better contact verification. .
It’s clear that Google is interested in making Messages the texting app of choice for Android users; It seems like part of that is allowing people to use mugshots of their friends and family as profile photos.
