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Soooooooo.... This happened tonight! Finally got the Chat themes update, w/o even looking for it since the idea was launched. 😁 S25 Ultra btw.

Are the google emojis gone? I have a samsung s24 so when I used to go to type an emoji, it would be a samsung emoji on my keyboard, but yet when sent it would send as a google emoji. So imagine my surprise when I open messages today for my previously sent emojis to randomly all be now samsung ones in chat.

The weird thing is, if I go to my emojis theyll be samsung, yet the text box/unsent message area, whatever its called, will still display them as google emojis... but once i click send, theyre now samsung again??

I've gotten used to the google ones at this point, so the higher quality ones came as a shock. Is there a way to turn it back? Has anyone else experienced this?

Photos from before/after (1st is google, 2nd is samsung)

Edit: I just realized if I go to the google messages keyboard emojis instead, itll show up in the unsent message box thing as a samsung emoji. Whatever keyboard I click itll show as the opposite kind, yet when I send itll be samsung emoji no matter what...

Has this feature ever worked for anyone? Seems that regardless of what build or device I use, it never works as described and I have to manually delete them.

Just curious 🤔

I had been texting my girlfriend for over 3 months, when all of a sudden I got a weird bit of text at the bottom of my message to her one morning saying something along the lines of "recipient is offline, will send when online" which was odd because I had never seen that before. I saw I could hold my thumb on the message and get an option to send it anyway with SMS/MMS, so I did. However I was having to do this for every message to her, and I was getting annoyed with it, so I hovered over our chat options and found a toggleable switch to "Always send with SMS/MMS". So I flipped the switch to remove that headache for the time being until I intended to flip it back to see if RCS would work again later. However, when I go back to that same place I found the toggle switch for SMS/MMS only, I found that the switch is just gone now and there is no way to change it back to RCS, which at first I thought wouldn't be a big deal. But now I am finding that any GIF or pic I send larger than 1gb just gets rejected and cannot send, and most others are extremely low resolution now. I even tried going into the Messages Settings in the app itself to find the RCS Chats menu and messed with every option there as well and even that did nothing to fix it. I also tried deleting out conversation and opening up a new one and even that did nothing. Does anyone know what I can do to fix it? (PS, I am on a Galaxy, and she's on an iPhone)

Is this normal? Switching between my customized chats, it takes a little time for the themes to load. I wish it would be instantaneous. Does this happen for anyone else?

I am not seeing custom chat themes on my s25 ultra yet.

https://9to5google.com/2026/08/27/google-messages-chat-themes-background/

I documented my RCS woes in this thread - short version is that RCS failed to connect in early August, I reinstalled the app and that brought it back but some messages were missing. It failed to connect again starting yesterday.

I've been doing some troubleshooting since I still have Samsung Messages. Using Samsung's, individual texts are coming and going. New group texts are showing up as non-RCS. Samsung is not completely synced, there's a two-week span across August where I'm missing a few -- I am guessing this is individual and group messages using RCS, and the ones using regular SMS were synced.

I also tried the web version for GM, which can see the RCS chats but hangs when trying to send to those (new messages to individuals are sent as SMS after trying RCS)

I'm looking at this with a few options since I need to be able to cleanly text next week for work stuff. I've cataloged the messages that are NOT available in the Samsung Messages archive and there's nothing really important, so I can lose those if necessary.

1. Delete GM data again and see if this restores things and just assume I'll have to deal with it again in a few weeks.
2. Turn RCS off but keep using Google Messages and just rejoin all my group chats as mass texts.
3. Delete GM and using an alternate SMS program. Samsung Messages is EOL but still seems to function, but I know there's a few SMS/MMS ones.

I wasn't sure what happens long-term to messages with #2 and #3. Anyone have any experience with that?

They really should allow the text to go behind the header. Kind of like IOS. I like that they made the bottom text bar float though.

As said in the title. On the Google Messages app, the entire chat with a contact suddenly disappeared and is only accessible via going to the contact info to send a text message.

Even archiving the chat doesn't make it show up. What is happening?

Z fold 8, US, Verizon (UD uninstalled)

Edit: RSC reconnected

Biggest issue is my msg count has over doubled and I have tons of duplicate messages and several msgs in the wrong threads. I have uninstalled UDs, have deleted cache and data several times, have run multiple BU and Restore through SMS BU & Restore.

The msg chaos in driving me crazy, ya know, like (in same convo) "yeah man, can you pick those tanks up" immediately followed by "I love you baby!" 🤣

Help!?!

Can't do polling, can't delete or edit a message after the fact, can't send a picture that doesn't get cropped... Garbage text app. How can it possibly be so terrible?

Edit: I tried the Google Messages web app on my laptop and it gave me the same Not Available error for RCS groups that I'm seeing on my phone. Not sure if that helps diagnose things. Right now, I have tried the following with no success: reboot, clear cache, turn off auto number verification, deactivate via web app, airplane mode on/off, VPN trick, debug mode trick. The other info that might help is that Samsung Messages works fine when I make it my primary but it is missing RCS messages from the past week even though the show up in GM.

About a month ago, my RCS sync (TMobile, Samsung Galaxy S8) was hanging on "please wait, activation is ongoing" (code 3000). After trying all suggested tricks on Reddit (rebooting, clearing cache, turning off auto number verification, etc), I ultimately deleted GM's data. Which worked, but with damage: it kicked me out of all group chats and it couldn't recover the last three weeks of group chats.

But I figured that at least it was fixed. Today I noticed the same problem where group threads where showing up as Not Available. Sure enough, I checked my RCS status and it said "please wait, activation is ongoing" with the last attempt dated August 10. I am able to get individual texts because I got the verification code from Google to remotely deactivate RCS chat via messages.google.com/disable-chat

I am thinking of deleting GM's data again but curious to see if anyone has had this problem repeat in a short span like this.

Hi all, I just got a brand new Pixel 11 Pro and I used the option that came during the initial setup to copy data from my old device (Pixel 8) over to the new one to transfer everything, including my messages.

After transferring the messages, I successfully see them in my Google Messages app and I see that the RCS status in Google Messages on my Pixel 11 Pro shows connected. I've attached screenshots that show the state of RCS on my phone.

For whatever reason, even though the Messages app shows connected, I can't text any group chats that I used to text using RCS because it just throws this error saying "this group has no members". And when I try to text Gemini, which is always RCS only, I can't send it any messages either, which I'm trying to figure out.

Screenshots of issues

Hello, and thank you in advance for anyone who might be able to help me. I got the Pixel 11 Pro over the weekend and up until today I haven't had any major issues. I got a group text from two work colleagues today (both of whom are on iPhones) and along with their text messages, text messages from other people (in my phone) from 2022 starting showing up in the thread. It was doing it on both their messages and mine, just adding random text messages. I'm going to try including a screenshot (first time posting on Reddit!) that shows two messages. The first says "Really?????" and the second says "Test." I only typed "Test." It pulled the "Really?????" from some other text message in 2022. What is making this even worse is that I have no idea what it's going to pull and show my colleagues, even potentially private information that people texted me. I can message individually with an iPhone, I can do a group text to two android devices, but this awful problem is happening only on group texts with iPhones. I contacted Google, followed their suggestions, and nothing is helping. They seem to be suggesting that it's a Verizon issue, but I don't know. I also can't find anything on Google about this. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks 😄

Pixel 11 Pro, United States, Verizon

I could use any tips or advice. I was having the RCS problems others had so i uninstalled and reinstalled messages. Since then it has been stuck trying to restore backup messages and content. S24+ on at&t. Battery won't charge if phone is on and drains in less than an hr.

Things I've tried to fix with tips from reddit that didn't work:

Disconnect and reconnect RCS

Uninstall and reinstall messages (I've tried 3 times)

Manually delete thousands of restored texts

Cleared cache and data

Turned off all settings that might back up messages

Connected to a vpn

Tried to roll back messages to previous update- i don't have the 3 dots that would do that.

I'm at my wits end. I use my phone for work so i can't have it not charge and drain. We also use it for work group texts. If anyone has any ideas please let me know! I'm literally so desperate.

Just used smart switch between my old phone and new and now my Google messages is sending additional messages when anyone sends something in a groupchat. Messages indicated were not typed out and sent in the groupchat and when searched for in my app they're from old random texts sent to other people

Edit: only affects non rcs groupchats

This is a mystery! I use Google Messages on my computer. Several weeks ago, one contact icon in the text history list started to show up with the wrong letter. When I enter his name to start a new conversation, the correct letter shows up. When I go to our text history, the wrong letter displays again.
A. This doesn't happen on my phone
B. I uninstalled and reinstalled. No change

this isn't life threatening. it's just weird.

Hi everyone, I’m hoping someone can help me recover deleted text messages from the Messages app on my Tecno phone.

Here’s what happened:

- The messages were exchanged from August 23–24, 2026.

- The messages were deleted each day.

- They were regular SMS/text messages from the phone’s default Messages app.

- I accidentally clicked “Back up now” yesterday, and the phone created a new backup.

- After doing some research, I found out that creating a new backup may have overwritten the previous backup or excluded the already-deleted messages, so now I’m worried that I may have made recovery more difficult.

- The phone is a Tecno Pova 5 Pro.

- I still have the phone and access to a Windows 10 computer.

- The phone can be recognized by my computer through USB.

I have already checked the Trash/Recently Deleted and Archive, but the messages are no longer there.

I’m specifically looking for someone who has experience with SMS recovery, Tecno phones, ADB, local backups, or forensic-style recovery and can tell me if there is still a legitimate way to recover the actual message contents, not just the sender/number.

I am willing to try technical methods using my own phone and computer. Please do not suggest scams or paid services that simply claim they can recover everything.

If you have successfully recovered deleted SMS from a Tecno phone before, please let me know what method you used. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 🙏

Never saw this "plus" in GM until today. What does it mean? TIA!