In 2018, the Mountain View company added a feature in Gmail that reminds the user to follow up on emails that Google’s service deems important. Today the XDA team spotted evidence that Google is planning to add a similar feature to the Google Messages app for Android.
Google Messages experiments with automated reminders for replies
XDA looked at the APK of the recently rolled out Google Messages app 9.5 betas on the Google Play Store and spotted strings and code snippets describing the new feature that Google plans to add to its messaging app. After enabling the two Nudges options.
<string name="nudge_continuation_enabled_pref_key">nudge_continuation_enabled</string>
<string name="nudge_continuation_enabled_pref_summary">Messages you might need to follow up on will appear at the top of your inbox</string>
<string name="nudge_continuation_enabled_pref_title">Suggest messages to follow up on</string>
<string name="nudge_learn_more_info_text">%1$s about nudges</string>
<string name="nudge_learn_more_pref_key">nudge_learn_more</string>
<string name="nudge_reply_enabled_pref_key">nudge_reply_enabled</string>
<string name="nudge_reply_enabled_pref_summary">Messages you might have forgotten to respond to will appear at the top of your inbox</string>
<string name="nudge_reply_enabled_pref_title">Suggest messages to reply to</string>
<string name="nudge_settings_page_title">Nudges</string>
<string name="nudge_settings_parent_pref">nudge_settings_parent</string>The app will automatically display messages that the user may have forgotten to reply to at the top of their inbox, and the app will similarly suggest messages that they may have to respond to. follow up. The screenshot below shows how the options will appear on the app settings page.
The Google Messages app already allows you to manually set a reminder to reply to a text that you consider important, however, it would be convenient to have an automated system as well. At the moment this new feature of Google Messages has not yet been released, but if Google does not decide to abandon it, it will most likely arrive first on the beta channel.
If you’re interested in trying this feature out when it’s available, you can join the Google Messages beta program here.
