Google Messages web app now supports direct reply

Google Messages on the web is rarely updated, but there is a recent addition that allows you to reply directly to Android-like RCS chats.

The most recent update to Messages for the web was support for updated RCS send status/read notifications.

Previously, hovering over an RCS chat was in messages.google.com/web It will allow you to copy and delete text, as well as interact with emoji (although you only have seven options instead of the whole picker on Android).

Google recently introduced the ability to directly reply to RCS messages on its desktop web client (PWA). When you do this, the chat appears above the text field with a “Reply to message” hint for an experience similar to the Android app, which gained this feature in October 2022.

This has been a much needed capability since the Messages web app has long supported displaying these quote replies made to/from phones.

These direct replies don’t appear to be available on Android tablets, which FAB has moved the “start chatting” rectangle from the top of the conversations list to the lower-right corner of that column. We’ve had our fair share of complaints about the QR code-based client, especially for the Pixel Tablet, but the lack of direct responses is curious given the usual level of feature parity with messages.google.com.

On a similar note, we recently noticed that Messages for Wear OS has been updated with a new design for suggested replies that use thin outlines of a bean-shaped container instead of filled-in buttons. This may be in preparation for design language tweaks that may coincide with Wear OS 4.