u/lainwla16

Just last week I was forced to stop using Textra because of the RCS bs and I'm finding that the lack of options to customize Messages on my Pixel is RIDICULOUS.

A few of my complaints:

NO universal themes available besides "light or dark mode." They've graciously enabled us to change the color of every single text thread one by one. That feature was announced like Google had cured the common cold but it's a big fat nothing. You get to choose from six colors WOWWWW Google thanks a lot 🙄

NO notification options and NO WAY TO HIDE MESSAGE PREVIEWS IN NOTIFICATIONS!!!!! This is infuriating. I don't want people around me to see any part of my text messages. WHY do they insist on making it COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to prevent that?? They make a ridiculous amount of noise about privacy but won't even let us hide the contents of our messages on our home screens! (Note, I'm talking about the home screen, not the lock screen.)

NO auto delete of old messages. The one and only option available in "message organization" is to delete texts with one time passwords. That's it, that is the entire extent of what they offer us for organizing messages. It's pathetic.

Google should be very embarrassed by how awful Messages is. They are more than happy to force us to abandon far superior third party apps like Textra (which I freaking loved), under the convenient excuse of this stupid RCS nonsense. But they won't do a SINGLE SOLITARY THING to make Messages a better app. I have an Android for the ability to customize my phone and they completely ripped away a feature that was hugely important to me, and I know I'm not the only one. I guess as long as they can still scrape our messages for data and AI purposes, they are happy, and why bother making anything better for a completely captive customer base?

I have to wonder if anyone at Google has ever looked at a single third party messaging app. Textra is infinitely better and that's just one option. The mighty Google apparently doesn't know how to make a decent messaging app and is too inept to learn from those who have. They should be so embarrassed.

Anyway I'm sure I'm screaming into the wind. Maybe someone reading this will have useful suggestions for me. Google clearly doesn't care and will never again care about what users want. All they really care about now is what they can get from us. Messages is one of the WORST apps I've ever used. It's garbage and Google should be ashamed.