A few months ago, Google set out to address a problem facing current Android and iPhone users. If you’ve ever tried to mass message users on another platform, you know that Emoji symbols are not recognized correctly, for example, the iOS side interprets the Emoji message as a line of text.
Over time, the contradictions caused by platform differences began to become more acute. The good news is that we’re one step closer to officially supporting iPhone emojis in Google Messages. 9to5Google reports that the search giant has started rolling out reactions support ( Apple calls it Tapback) to most Google Messages beta users.
| iMessage symbol | iMessage text | Google Messages emoji |
| Heart | Loved | 😍 |
| Thumbs up | Liked | 👍 |
| Thumbs down | Disliked | 👎 |
| Haha | Laughed at | 😂 |
| Exclamation marks | Emphasized | 😮 |
| Question mark | Questioned | 🤔 |
If you’re experimenting with the beta version, you’ll find that the relevant emojis are no longer parsed as lines of text, but instead pop up in the lower right corner of text messages. While not a 100% correspondence, the Google Messages development team did put their best effort into matching the heart emoji with the smiley face with heart-shaped eyes.
In addition, Haha corresponds to a crying face, exclamation corresponds to a surprised face, and a question mark becomes a thinking face. But no matter which platform you’re on, the thumbs up looks the same.
This Google Messages feature will be enabled by default once your phone receives an update push. But if you think it is not necessary, you can also choose to disable it in the “Settings → Advanced” option.