They really didn’t have to redesign a text box. Please stop reinventing the wheel. I don’t need another pop up in my life.
While I agree this is bad, do people still use messages? In my country everyone uses WhatsApp or Telegram.
The only time I open the messages app is to get OTPs or something.
Yeah SMS is used a lot in North America, especially in the US, and especially by older people.
Yeah, that’s true. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve messaged someone on an arguably better platform only for them to say, “I prefer text”. It’s annoying…
I believe it’s due to North America making text messages free early on, while many other places charged for them. As a result, the culture of texting stuck.
I would prefer to use a standardised, client–agnostic messaging protocol than anything that requires a specific app.
I stopped using WhatsApp because using a Meta product makes me feel icky. I use Telegram and Matrix to contact drug dealers. My work requires a combination of Google Chat, Teams and Slack. Some of my friends like to stick to Discord.
What would be really great is if we could all decide on one protocol for sending end–to–end encrypted text and media over HTTPS to a globally unique ID and have everyone use whatever client they like. Like SMTP but more streamlined and secure. Google, Apple, Samsung etc can ship devices with a default client, but allow users to install another one that they like more.
But OEMs don’t like things to be open. Apple has iMessage, Google has RCS, and Samsung probably does some bullshit I’m not aware of since committing to the Pixel life. So I will probably always have a folder with 15 different messaging apps.
Samsung is RCS as well, as far as I’m aware RCS is supposed to be a platform agnostic upgrade to MMS. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I thought RCS not being supported by iOS is simply because Apple won’t implement it.
I paid for Textra over a decade ago, and it’s easily the best money I’ve ever spent. It’s the best texting app I’ve ever used and I highly recommend everyone check it out. They still churn out updates regularly and the features are above and beyond most messaging apps.
It’s impressive how modern companies with thousands of professional designers manage to make increasingly goofy designs lol
Modern design seems to be hellbent on wasting as much screen space as possible.
Apples actually generally pretty good at not wasting much screen space.
To prove yourself as a executive you have to make the company do stuff, so people come up with reasons to do wasteful things. It’s all a circle of shit people being shitty to get ahead.
Smart compose is there for me. It looks like this bar will have more icons depending on the context and maybe more in the future.
Apparently Textra itself doesn’t support desktop sync like Google’s app, but there are workarounds.
However, does Textra support RCS?
It doesn’t support RCS because Google’s implementation of it (with encryption) is not open.
What a weird evil slow burn Google is doing. AOSP used to be an entire open phone operating system for the most part, (aside from binary driver blobs and some DRM stuff) but with each passing year, they close-source everything. It used to be a big proud point Android users celebrated, “oh well I can go read my source code, unlike iOS!” Annnnd…nope.
I want a new mobile OS to replace the shit sandwich of Gappleoogle.
This doesn’t seem correct. RCS is supposed to be supported by you mobile provider, if it isn’t only then your messaging app on Android will use Google’s service. The whole protocol was meant to be open to entice companies to adopt it.
I understand Google dropped don’t be evil, but they are not a villain in every story.
Fuckin annoying tbh. Can’t stand when giga corps do this and sense it’s required for rcs I can’t just go get a better foss alternative sense none of the people I text are tech savvy or able/willing to switch to something else and rcs is pretty essential for me knowing if someone read it or not.
If I could I would ditch all google and giga corps products but I’m way to poor to do that. And it’s so ingrained into society it’s hard to find anything that works with these proprietary shit.
Linux is free ig
It’s free as in money, but certainly not in time spent.
linux mint exists btw
My comment still applies, unless you just use some basic software and a browser, it takes more time investment to get things working and maintain it.
the og comment is from a self clamed ‘tech savvy person’
Linux on mobile is no good, and the devices it does run on do not support the proper bands and modes for usable coverage, if the carriers even allow the devices on their networks. (A more US problem all around.)
Pinephone pro had awesome cell coverage. Better than my pixel 4 xl even. Now battery life is a totally different story. I’d last I tried was pretty awful too as phosh wasn’t amazing and plasma mobile would kill itself often. It’s been at least a year since I last used any of it though since I left it 5 states away.
dude, i was talking about desktop linux
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I don’t understand how is it essential to know if someone read your message. Shouldn’t they reply to you if they need to let you know?
Read confirmation is the first feature I disable on every instant messaging platform. Also delivery confirmation is implemented in standard SMS.
Mainly because some of the people I know read it and don’t respond, for instance my partner coming home from work and me needing something at the store and she’s driving and can’t respond but pops up on her messages so she knows but can’t respond. It’s really helpful knowing they read it then me not sure wtf is going on.
Just a scenario riddled with probably lots of flaws but hopefully you get the point.
If she is driving she cannot click on the message or on “mark message as read” either.
Legally.
Some car features allow you to connect your phone and you can have a message read aloud to you through voice command.
It’s not just read receipts. It’s reactions, replies, and immensely better image quality.
The comment I replied to listed read confirmation as the only essential feature to them, that forbids them to drop Google Messages.
Can Textra handle RCS yet? I bought it ages ago but ditched it when it couldn’t handle RCS
Nothing can without the blessing of Google, and so far that’s limited to Google Messages and Samsung Messages (whatever it’s called)
Great standard you got there. Fucking hell
I’ve been reading articles for years about how Google say they’re going to open the RCS API to 3rd-Party apps but they have yet to do so.
They’re proobably working on how to track messages on the way, like “hey, wanna use RCS? here’s our com.google.rcs library”, which by coincidence sends every message to Google.
Your cynicism is warranted but a big part of the advertised value is that their rcs implementation is end to end encrypted. Or they say it is, which presumably someone (not me!) would be able to verify.
This is why I scoff every time Google takes jabs at Apple about iMessage. Pot, meet kettle. Until I can use rcs with Textra, they got no room to talk
It’s so bad I uninstalled all updates and went back to the version that shipped with the phone. That got rid of it.
I tried to install other versions from apkmirror but the design has been in there a while and they turned it on server side. My P8 shipped with
messages.android _20230529_03_RCO1
and it’s gone for me.
Weird. My version is from 2 weeks ago and I don’t see it.
I thought this was just me but I swear this is so fucking annoying
Completely unnecessary filler space
Lol I’m glad other people are talking about it because same… I updated it and noticed immediately and thought it felt/looked a little odd. Here’s to hoping they listen to feedback if enough is provided! I’ve enjoyed the app, otherwise, for the RCS and what not.
The text lines up with the recipient’s text bubbles. It’s on the left, and it’s left justified, so it’s under the other person’s messages, rather than mine.
I could have sworn the old UI had the text entry closer to the right.
I like it. Previously it would hide a bunch of icons to give the bar more space, now it doesn’t need to
At the cost of space for the actual content on screen.
From what I noticed they only added an emoji button though. This already is on my keyboard area. Maybe I’m missing something but at least you enjoy it.
There is also the new AI response button. But not everyone sees that. I think that’s the biggest reason for this change. It looks better than the couple other ways they demoed the ai smart reply ui.
And the emoji button in the message area has less features than the one found in the Google keyboard (no emoji kitchen?!), so I’ll never want to use it anyways.
I think it’s an improvement, particularly for folks like my grandfather that have the UI/font scale increased.
On his phone there was basically 1-2 words that would fit in that old text box …
so his text message preview looked like thisThen maybe they should make it an option instead of ruining it for the rest of us because wasting space is the new hip thing.
Maybe they reserve that space for future AI suggestions?
Almost certainly the answer. Same reason they just hobbled their “ok Google” by not letting you access it with the screen off anymore. They’re going to switch engines and they want to reintroduce the same features all over again but make it feel like an upgrade.
“We can’t remember what happened last quarter, so surely our users won’t remember how their phones used to be better! Genius! Moving on, time to go make and destroy a new app, how about a notepad app this time?” --Google
On the new pixels, as you start typing you get some AI tools that will rewrite your message, make suggestions, etc
Pixel 7 Pro here, haven’t seen this at all, it’s just dead space for me.
The 7 isn’t new anymore. That person meant the 8
Pixel 8 pro here. I haven’t seen it either.
A tragedy. I hate that little useless space. Those features should be on Gboard not messages
Does anyone else feel like the quality of the keyboard swipe auto-complete has completely tanked as well?
Just like their search engine, every version of Android gets worse.
I don’t know how to edit the main post on mobile so I’ll just add this comment. The message I typed in the screenshot populates in a “pop up bar”. The message no longer gets entered where you think it should go and it looks like shit and takes up extra screen space for no reason. I really dislike this change.
